When Arcade Publishing originally contracted this extraordinary collection of poetry and literature, the Department of the Treasury was attempting to censor the publication of works from countries on America’s “enemies list.” Arcade, along with the PEN American Center, the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, and the Association of American University Presses, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the United States government. Their landmark case forced the Office of Foreign Assets Control to change their regulations regarding editing and publishing literature in translation, and Arcade is proud to reissue this anthology that showcases the developments in Iranian literature over the past quarter-century. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the United States has been virtually cut off from that country’s culture. Despite severe difficulties imposed by social, political, and economic upheavals, as well as war, repression, and censorship, a veritable cultural renewal has taken place in Iran over the past quarter-century, not only in literature, but in music, art, and cinema. Over forty writers from three generations contributed to this rich and varied collection—or, to use the Persian term, golchine, a bouquet—one that provides a much-needed window into a largely undiscovered branch of world literature. In the wake of the Green Revolution and sweeping changes in the region, this particular golchine is more relevant than ever, and will bring literary enjoyment as well as a fuller understanding of a complex and ever-shifting culture.

"In these pointed and wide–ranging essays, Wendy Willis explores everything from personal resistance to the rise of political podcasts, civic loneliness to the exploitation of personal data, public outrage to the opioid crisis—all with a poet's gift for finding the sacred in the mundane, a hope in the dark. One of the country's sharpest observers of politics, art, and the American spirit, Willis returns often to the demanding question posed by Czech writer, activist, and politician Václav Havel: What does it mean to live in truth? Her view is honed by her place as a poet, as a mother, and, when necessary, as an activist. Together, the essays in These Are Strange Times, My Dear work within that largely unmapped place where the heartbreaks and uncertainties of one's inner life brush up against the cruelties and responsibilities of politics and government and our daily lives."

“A lovely tribute to the courage and creativity of Iran’s musicians . . . filled with hope and sadness—and the universal human desire for freedom.” —Joe Klein, Time Music was one of the first casualties of the Iranian Revolution. It was banned in 1979, but it quickly crept back into Iranian culture and politics. Now, more than forty years on, both the children of the revolution and their music have come of age. Soundtrack of the Revolution offers a striking account of Iranian culture, politics, and social change to provide an alternative history of the Islamic Republic. Drawing on over five years of research in Iran, including during the 2009 protests, Nahid Siamdoust introduces a full cast of characters, from musicians and audience members to state officials, and takes readers into concert halls and underground performances, as well as the state licensing and censorship offices. She closely follows the work of four musicians—a giant of Persian classical music, a government-supported pop star, a rebel rock-and-roller, and an underground rapper—each with markedly different political views and relations with the Iranian government. Taken together, these examinations of musicians and their music shed light on issues at the heart of debates in Iran—about its future and identity, changing notions of religious belief, and the quest for political freedom. Music will continue to offer an opening for debate and defiance. As the 2009 Green Uprising and the 1979 Revolution before it have proven, the invocation of a potent melody or musical verse can unite strangers into a powerful public. “Paints a vivid portrait of the struggles over popular music in the Islamic Republic.” —Mark LeVine, author of Heavy Metal Islam

Perceptions of the Middle East in conflicting discourses from North America, South America, and Europe

The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation offers a detailed overview of the field of Persian literature in translation, discusses the development of the field, gives critical expression to research on Persian literature in translation, and brings together cutting-edge theoretical and practical research. The book is divided into the following three parts: (I) Translation of Classical Persian Literature, (II) Translation of Modern Persian Literature, and (III) Persian Literary Translation in Practice. The chapters of the book are authored by internationally renowned scholars in the field, and the volume is an essential reference for scholars and their advanced students as well as for those researching in related areas and for independent translators of Persian literature.

UK journalist falsely imprisoned by the Iran police state NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY JON STEWART Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s contested presidential elections for Newsweek magazine. He thought he’d be returning in just a few days to Paola, his pregnant fiancée. Instead, he was incarcerated under false charges of espionage in Iran’s most notorious prison. His release came four months later, only after a global campaign supported by Hillary Clinton. While suffering regular beatings, forced confessions, and threats of execution, Bahari draws strength from the experiences of his family in the past: his father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. Exposing the contradictions at the heart of Ahmadinejad’s paranoid regime, this inspiring and often witty story of one family’s courage in the face of repression is also a beautifully written portrait of modern Iran.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY JON STEWART | Previously published as Then They Came for Me When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he’d be back in just a few days, a week at most. Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater. For the Bahari family, wars, coups, and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar’s father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. Alone in his cell at Evin Prison, fearing the worst, Maziar draws strength from his memories of the courage of his father and sister in the face of torture, and hears their voices speaking to him across the years. He dreams of being with Paola in London, and imagines all that she and his rambunctious, resilient eighty-four-year-old mother must be doing to campaign for his release. During the worst of his encounters with Rosewater, he silently repeats the names of his loved ones, calling on their strength and love to protect him and praying he will be released in time for the birth of his first child. A riveting, heart-wrenching memoir, Rosewater offers insight into the past seventy years of regime change in Iran, as well as the future of a country where the democratic impulses of the youth continually clash with a government that becomes more totalitarian with each passing day. An intimate and fascinating account of contemporary Iran, it is also the moving and wonderfully written story of one family’s extraordinary courage in the face of repression. “I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.”—Jon Stewart “An important and elegant book . . . a prison memoir enlarged into a family history.”—The New Republic “Clear and compelling . . . engaging and informative—a gripping tribute to human dedication and a cogent indictment of a corrupt regime.”—Washington Independent Review of Books “[Rosewater] is not only a fascinating, human exploration into Bahari’s personal experience . . . it also provides insight into the shared experience of those affected by repressive governments everywhere.”—Mother Jones “A damning account . . . [Rosewater] turns a lens not only on Iran’s surreal justice system but on the history and culture that helped produce it.”—The Washington Post “[Rosewater] is a unique achievement. It is a story not just of political cruelty (a subject Bahari treats movingly), but also about the two poles of Iranian political culture, bent together in upheaval.”—The Guardian (UK) “A beautifully written account of life in Iran, filled with insights not only into the power struggles and political machinations but into the personal, emotional lives of the people living in that complicated country. Maziar Bahari is a brave man and a wonderful storyteller.”—Fareed Zakaria

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Iranian intellectuals have been preoccupied by issues of political and social reform, Iran's relation with the modern West, and autocracy, or arbitrary rule. Drawing from a close reading of a broad array of primary sources, this book offers a thematic account of the Iranian intelligentsia from the Constitutional movement of 1905 to the post-1979 revolution. Ali Gheissari shows how in Iran, as in many other countries, intellectuals have been the prime mediators between the forces of tradition and modernity and have contributed significantly to the formation of the modern Iranian self image. His analysis of intellectuals' response to a number of fundamental questions, such as nationalism, identity, and the relation between Islam and modern politics, sheds new light on the factors that led to the Iranian Revolution—the twentieth century's first major departure from Western political ideals—and helps explain the complexities surrounding the reception of Western ideologies in the Middle East.

The foundational text for the acclaimed New York Times and international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran The ruler of a totalitarian state seeks validation from a former schoolmate, now the nation's foremost thinker, in order to access a cultural cache alien to his regime. A literary critic provides commentary on an unfinished poem that both foretells the poet's death and announces the critic's secret identity as the king of a lost country. The greatest of Vladimir Nabokov's enchanters--Humbert--is lost within the antithesis of a fairy story, in which Lolita does not hold the key to his past but rather imprisons him within the knowledge of his distance from that past. In this precursor to her international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi deftly explores the worlds apparently lost to Nabokov's characters, their portals of access to those worlds, and how other worlds hold a mirror to Nabokov's experiences of physical, linguistic, and recollective exile. Written before Nafisi left the Islamic Republic of Iran, and now published in English for the first time and with a new introduction by the author, this book evokes the reader's quintessential journey of discovery and reveals what caused Nabokov to distinctively shape and reshape that journey for the author.

An invaluable primer on the US-Iran conflict by U.S. and Iranian scholars.