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A captivating, polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran.
1979. Behsad, 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 Behsad. 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.
“The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran fits the family novel mold in many ways: it spans generations, explores inherited trauma, and depicts the effects of politics on a family … This highly political and touching novel gives a great insight into the political situation in Iran … In translating this vision of authorial omnipotence — of an imagined freedom — Ruth Martin brings Shida Bazyar’s politically urgent and thematically significant voice to English-speaking readers … creating an experience that feels both immediate and compelling.”
—Ankita Harbola, Reading in Translation
“A fascinating look at the life of an immigrant family in Germany … Bazyar writes with a brilliant clarity … Special commendation goes to Ruth Martin for her translation.”
—Driftless Area Review
“We always think we know something about people, but then Shida Bazyar brilliantly shows us how much we still have to learn.”
—Olga Grjasnowa, author of City of Jasmine
“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.”
—Rhoda Kwan, The Saturday Paper
“So lively, so touching, and more relevant than ever. Read it!”
—Cosmopolitan
“With a clear, sharp eye and plenty of space and feeling for contradictions, Bazyar draws a family portrait of people who have started a new life in a foreign country and are trying to keep something of the old.”
—Books Magazine
Praise for Sisters in Arms:
“A smart, important novel that gives you a caress on the cheek and a punch in the jaw as you read it. The amazing thing is that in the end you want more of both.”
—Pierre Jarawan, author of Song for the Missing
“Shida Bazyar tells us—uncompromisingly, powerfully, and accusingly—what it means to have one’s origins constantly questioned.”
—Judges’ comments for The German Book Prize
“Humane, relatable, and self-aware, Sisters in Arms is an involving novel that indicts polite neoliberalism and open racism alike for the ways in which people in contemporary societies are forced apart.”
—Foreword Reviews