Loved this book. Lots of interesting information to digest. This is a great read for anyone who loves to read about history. Very well written

Damian is young, highly educated and coming to terms with his own sexuality. After a degree from Oxford University, he’s in California learning about the great Persian poets when he falls in love with Arash, a young Iranian student. Arash’s brother Reza, a photographer, a dissident, insists on making sure Damian knows about the dark side of his homeland – the torture, the disappearances, the oppression and the corruption. He also ensures Damian knows that you can’t be an ‘out’ gay man in Iran without attracting the wrong kind of attention.

Anna has inherited her father’s house in Oxford and has taken in two visiting Iranian students who offer different perspectives about their homeland. She’s struggling with her loss and when the opportunity comes up to do a stint as an English teacher and poetry researcher at the University of Tabriz, she decides to go, not knowing that any sensible government would not be sending young poetry-loving romantic people into the eye of the impending storm. Change is coming; big change. And Anna and Damian are going to be changed forever.

I count myself extremely fortunate to have been to Iran, both for work and for a holiday. It’s an amazing country with a fascinating history, much of which is obscured by the current repressive regime. That’s not to say what came before was easy. The last Shah was not a nice man, but he was the west’s puppet. He swapped arms for oil and ran a repressive regime of secret police, torture and human rights abuses. Iran being Iran, a lot of resistance was through poets and artists. Dissident poetry – not two words you’d necessarily put together – played a big part in the resistance to his regime.

We get a multi-layered story. Anna in Oxford before Iran. Damian in California before Iran. Damian in Germany after Iran. Damian in Tabriz. Anna in Tabriz. It’s all muddled up together. For me, the greatest weakness of the book is the failure to give the different characters distinct voices. And, all that hopping about doesn’t always help to give great clarity.

I like the decision to put the story in Tabriz rather than Tehran or Qom where all the ‘big action’ was happening. Historic events are often better observed from a bit of a distance yet still within the country. I like the accounts of ‘normal’ life – going to buy bread, taking a tourist trip to Persepolis, visiting the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz (compulsory for all tourists, I think), trying to go to work even when no students are turning up to be taught. Getting security briefings from the mysterious Julia who tells them when they can go out, when to cover Anna’s hair, how to stay out of trouble.

There’s a lot of good in this book. I don’t recommend it to first-timers who don’t know about that time in Iran. I do, however, give a hearty recommendation to read it after you’ve done a bit of homework. My number one recommendation for a book to help understand Iran is always Kader Abdollah’s ‘The House of the Mosque’ which will take you through the 20th-century history of the country through the eyes of one extended family.

It’s a good book that could have been better if there were greater distinctions between the narrators’ voices but I still give it four stars and hope it sells well.

I read this book against the backdrop of the fall of Kabul and the frantic attempts of locals to escape the Taliban. It felt like absolutely the right time to be reading it. Playing ‘compare and contrast’ between Iran in 1979 and Afghanistan in 2021 was painful, and all the more disturbing because we know what happened in Iran and know what the Taliban did last time around. You could argue that a book set in the time before a major event that doesn’t touch too much on the ‘what happens next’ is missing the action, but I’d disagree. This is not so much about the calm before the storm – because it wasn’t very calm – but it does build up the sense of tension of the time before the powder keg was lit.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my copy.