The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran:
shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026
Translated by Ruth Martin
Buy ebook
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran:
shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026
Translated by Ruth Martin
Overview
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026
A captivating, polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran.
1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.
1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.
1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.
2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down …
A topical, moving novel about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 288 pages
- 9781761381416
- AUD$29.99
- 29 April 2025
- World English
Categories
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2026 The International Booker Prize
Praise
‘Through cycles of exile and return, we follow an Iranian family across four decades — and learn what it means to always live in hope. The pages … pulse with solidarities and betrayal, with heartache and humour.’
‘Bazyar’s stories strike at the aching heart of exile. A pulsing longing for a better future lingers from its first page to its last. A quietly beautiful exploration of the trauma of losing one’s homeland to a savage regime, the novel is testament to how hope and the revolutionary spirit endure in the face of crushing tyranny, how courage cannot be fully stamped out. It lies dormant, awaiting a time when it can again ignite new acts of bravery, new waves of revolution.’
About the Author
Shida Bazyar, born in 1988, studied writing in Hildesheim, and, in addition to writing, worked in youth education for many years. She is the author of The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran — which has won the Blogger Literary Award, Ulla Hahn Prize, and Uwe Johnson Prize, among others, and has been translated into Dutch, Farsi, French, and Turkish — and Sisters in Arms.
Translator
Ruth Martin studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German. She has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth and Hannah Arendt to Volker Weidermann and Shida Bazyar. She has taught translation at the University of Kent and the Bristol Translates summer school, and is a former co-chair of the Society of Authors Translators Association.
