When Leila comes to see Doctor Karimi, both are in danger. Born in a slum to a Muslim father and a Jewish mother, Kooshyar Karimi has transformed himself into a successful doctor, an award-winning writer, and an adoring father. His could be a comfortable life but his conscience won't permit it: he is incapable of turning away the unmarried women who beg him to save their lives by ending the pregnancies that, if discovered, would see them stoned to death. One of those women is 22-year-old Leila. Beautiful, intelligent, passionate, she yearns to go to university but her strictly traditional family forbids it. Returning home from the library one day – among the few trips she's allowed out of the house – she meets a handsome shopkeeper, and her fate is sealed. Kooshyar has rescued countless women, but Leila seeks his help for a different reason, one that will haunt him for years afterwards and inspire an impossible quest from faraway Australia. Spellbinding and heartbreaking. Leila's Secret shows us everyday life for women in a country where it can be a crime to fall in love. But for all its tragedy, this unforgettable book is paradoxically uplifting, told from the heart of Kooshyar's immense sympathy, in the hope that each of us – and the stories we tell – can make a difference.

      In 1979, seemingly overnight—moving at a clip some thirty years faster than the rest of the world—Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be. They have drawn as deeply on the traditions of the West as of the East and have acted upon their beliefs with urgency and passion, frequently staking their lives for them.   With more than a decade of experience reporting on, researching, and writing about Iran, Laura Secor narrates this unprecedented history as a story of individuals caught up in the slipstream of their time, seizing and wielding ideas powerful enough to shift its course as they wrestle with their country’s apparatus of violent repression as well as its rich and often tragic history. Essential reading at this moment when the fates of our countries have never been more entwined, Children of Paradise will stand as a classic of political reporting; an indelible portrait of a nation and its people striving for change.

    Actively challenging mainstream Western notions of Iran and fashion as well as domestic government clothing regulations, this book provides a visual introduction to the Iranian underground fashion industry and the young people who are making up the rules as they go.This photography book aims to not only serve as an inspirational guide for alternative dressing and style, but also to send the reader to explore a part of the world that has been hidden, misrepresented, and misunderstood in much of Western media. Fashion is a very powerful tool of self-expression and communication; it is a language that is universally spoken with endless possibilities to build bridges and inspire understanding and peace. And this book aims to do just that.Barnes and Noble

    The everyday life of each character subtly reflects viewpoints that are simultaneously Iranian and American, of all ages and circumstances. These stories deal with family, friends, relationships, urban life, prison, school, and adolescence. They also contain powerful messages about what people want, need, and deserve as citizens and human beings. For instance, in the story “Better Than War” a young Iranian boy must overcome the fear of asking an American girl on a date. His friend tells him there is no shame in pouring your heart out to someone you like. The boy must realize that expressing emotion and sorrow is worth the embarrassment because it shows loved ones that you are better than hatred—and especially better than war.All Iranian immigrants, young or old, carry with them a vivid past in their contemporary life. These histories help provide perspective, thankfulness, and virtue to their families and friends. Vossoughi’s Better Than War is about growing up, coming of age, and raising children in America while still remembering the importance of retaining Iranian pride.

    Scholars often locate the origins of the modern Islamic world in European colonialism or Islamic reactions to European modernity. However, this study focuses on the rise of Islamic movements indigenous to the Middle East, which developed in direct response to the collapse and decentralization of the Islamic gunpowder empires. In other words, the book argues that the Usuli movement as well as Wahhabism and neo-Sufism emerged in reaction to the disintegration and political decentralization of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires. The book specifically highlights the emergence of Usuli Shi‘ism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The long-term impact of the Usuli revival was that Shi‘i clerics gained unprecedented social, political, and economic power in Iran and southern Iraq. Usuli clerics claimed authority to issue binding legal judgments, which, they argue, must be observed by all Shi‘is. By the early nineteenth century, Usulism emerged as a popular, fiercely independent, transnational Islamic movement. The Usuli clerics have often operated at the heart of social and political developments in modern Iraq and Iran and today dominate the politics of the region.

    That got her hooked on science early and provided an opportunity for her to find herself. In The Sky Detective, Azadeh shares her life story--one that includes an insider's look at life during the Islamic Revolution and Iraqi War and details how one little girl grew up to become a gifted scientist. Set inside Iran in the final years of the monarchy, the author narrates a true story of friendship between two girls growing up in the same household in Tehran: Azadeh, the daughter of an affluent engineer, and Najmieh, a child servant who arrives from a small village in northern Iran to live with Azadeh's family. When the girls are teenagers, political turmoil interrupts their lives, sending them down different paths. This memoir recalls friendship and faith, the bonds between parents and daughters in a paternalistic society, and the clash of values among relatives from different generations in a family. The Sky Detective describes the rich culture of a beautiful but deeply troubled land undergoing radical transformation. In spite of the hardship that comes along with the establishment of a theocratic regime, Azadeh shows her will and determination as a young woman to persevere and realize her childhood dream of becoming a world-renowned scientist.

    The country’s harsh Islamic code of Lavat is used to execute gay men, and LGBT individuals who avoid execution are often subjected to severe lashings, torture and imprisonment. It was in this unforgiving environment that Arsham Parsi came to terms with his identity as a gay man. When a close friend committed suicide after his family learned he was gay, Arsham felt compelled to act. Risking his life as well as the safety of his family, he used the anonymity of the Internet to speak out about the human rights abuses against LGBT people in his country. In 2005 Parsi learned that an order had been issued for his arrest and execution. He was forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Turkey until, thirteen months later, he was granted asylum in Canada.Exiled for Love follows Parsi’s incredible journey from his first understanding of his sexual orientation to his eventual exile. It explores the reality for LGBT people in Iran through the deeply personal and inspiring story of his life, escape and continuing work.

    She sought an escape from the suffocation she felt under the cultural rules of her country and the future her family had envisioned for her. While she settled uneasily into American life, the political unrest in Iran intensified and in February of 1979, Farideh’s family was forced to flee Iran on the last El-Al flights to Tel Aviv. They arrived in Israel as refugees, having left everything behind including the only home Farideh’s father had ever known.Baba, as Farideh called her father, was a well-respected son of the chief rabbi and dayan of the Jews of Shiraz. During his last visit to the United States in 2006, he handed Farideh his memoir that chronicled the years of his life after exile: the confiscation of his passport while he attempted to return to Iran for his belongings, the resulting years of loneliness as he struggled against a hostile bureaucracy to return to his wife and family in Israel, and the eventual loss of the poultry farm that had supported his family. Farideh translated her father’s memoir along with other documents she found in a briefcase after his death. Leaving Iran knits together her father’s story of dislocation and loss with her own experience as an Iranian Jew in a newly adopted home. As an intimate portrait of displacement and the construction of identity, as a story of family loyalty and cultural memory, Leaving Iran is an important addition to a growing body of Iranian–American narratives.

    

    Suzanne Maloney provides the first comprehensive overview of Iran's political economy since the 1979 revolution and offers detailed examinations of two aspects of the Iranian economy of direct interest to scholars and non-specialist readers of Iran: the energy sector and the role of sanctions. Based on the author's research as both a scholar and government advisor, the book also features interviews with American and Iranian government officials. Moving chronologically from the early years under Khomeini, through the economic deprivations of the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, through liberalization under Khatami to the present, Maloney offers fascinating insights into Iran's domestic politics and how economic policies have affected ideology, leadership priorities, and foreign relations.

    Whereas previous studies have regarded Christians as marginal, insular, and often persecuted participants in this empire, Richard Payne demonstrates their integration into elite networks, adoption of Iranian political practices and imaginaries, and participation in imperial institutions.  The rise of Christianity in Iran depended on the Zoroastrian theory and practice of hierarchical, differentiated inclusion, according to which Christians, Jews, and others occupied legitimate places in Iranian political culture in positions subordinate to the imperial religion. Christians, for their part, positioned themselves in a political culture not of their own making, with recourse to their own ideological and institutional resources, ranging from the writing of saints’ lives to the judicial arbitration of bishops. In placing the social history of East Syrian Christians at the center of the Iranian imperial story, A State of Mixture helps explain the endurance of a culturally diverse empire across four centuries.

    Captive Society surveys the Basij's history, structure, and sociology, as well as its influence on Iran's society, economy, and educational system. Saied Golkar's account draws not only on published materials — including Basij and Revolutionary Guard publications, allied websites, and blogs — but also on his own informal communications with Basij members while studying and teaching in Iranian universities as recently as 2014. In addition, he incorporates findings from surveys and interviews he conducted while in Iran.Saeid Golkar is a lecturer in Middle East and North African studies at Northwestern University and a visiting fellow of Iran policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He was a fellow at the Wilson Center in 2013–14.

    Islamism is widely considered to shape all social relations in Iranian society and, while Iranian society is indeed Islamic, this term's multiple meanings in everyday life and practices go far beyond the naive and monolithic idea we are used to. The Thousand and One Borders of Iran analyses travel as a social practice, exploring how diasporas, margins and so-called peripheries are central in the construction of a national identity and thus revealing the complexities of Iranian history and society. Written by a leading anthropologist, it draws upon fieldwork carried out in Iran and Iranian migrant communities across Dubai, Tokyo and Los Angeles from 1998 to 2015. While casting new perspectives on the place of transnational relations in an increasingly globalized world, this work also sheds new light on the evolution of Iranian society, countering the explanation furnished by nationalist ideology that has been reproduced by the Islamic Republic itself. Its unique approach to the analysis of Iranian society through the theme of travel and borders considers the links and even the quarrels between the centre of Iranian society and the periphery, and the foreign elements that have contributed to society's development. Travel is key to these interactions and, following the travels of merchants and workers, students or the faithful, elected officials and experts, or exiles and refugees, this book offers an anthropological study of travel that re-thinks Iranian history and national identity.This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Iranian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology.

    Written by two eminent scholars specializing in Persian painting and epigraphy, respectively, Persian Painting catalogs more than forty masterpieces of Persian miniature painting, manuscript illustration, and bookbinding in The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait. Coauthors Adel T. Adamova and Manijeh Bayani place the works in an artistic and historical context and demonstrate their significance in the development of Persian painting. From a historical perspective, they document the movement of manuscripts through their owners’ seal impressions and librarians’ notes, and identify various works by scribes and illustrators involved in the production of these manuscripts and miniatures. Richly illustrated and including rare examples from the pre-Mongol invasion period never before reproduced in print, the book also includes illustrated folios detached from important fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts and paintings from dispersed Safavid and post-Safavid albums, as well as seventeenth-century bookbindings and oil paintings from the Zand and Qajar periods.

    When Shah ‘Abbas came to power his country was in chaos. Yet within eleven years he had regained territory lost to his enemies, moved his capital city and begun a transformation of Iranian society. Few aspects of life were unaffected by his policies and the new capital he built, the spectacular Isfahan, is still referred to as nisf-i jahan, or “half the world”, by Iranians today. In this wide-ranging profile, Sholeh A. Quinn explores Shah ʻAbbas’s rise to power and his subsequent interactions with religious movements and artistic developments, reaching beyond the historical narrative to assess the true impact of the man and his politics. Thought provoking and comprehensive, this account is ideal for readers interested in uncovering the life and thoughts of a man who ruled during a period described by many as a golden age for the arts in Iran.

    Since 1989, the internal dynamics of change in Iran, rooted in a panoply of socioeconomic, cultural, institutional, demographic, and behavioral factors, have led to a noticeable transition in both societal and governmental structures of power, as well as the way in which many Iranians have come to deal with the changing conditions of their society. This is all exacerbated by the global trend of communication and information expansion, as Iran has increasingly become the site of the burgeoning demands for women's rights, individual freedoms, and festering tensions and conflicts over cultural politics. These realities, among other things, have rendered Iran a country of unprecedented-and at time paradoxical-changes. This book explains how and why.