This compelling novel follows five lives changed forever by Iran’s Islamic revolution

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, follows five members of one family across decades following Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Per The Conversation, the novel doesn't chronicle major events or key figures, but rather how the revolution changed individual lives in fundamentally incompatible ways. Behzad, an atheist communist teacher, and Peyman, a pragmatic artist, each envision a different revolution than the one they face. Behzad and his comrade Nahid fall in love, marry, and eventually flee to Germany in exile. There, Nahid is haunted by the untranslatability of language — captured in the observation that 'language is the only homeland.' Their daughter Laleh, born into exile, feels she belongs fully to neither Iran nor Germany. Through sharp, polyphonic prose, author Shida Bazyar revives voices that forces beyond their control would have silenced.

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