"Not since the London of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent has a city ticked with as much tense significance as the Tehran of Salar Abdoh's edgy, topical, yet deeply humane Tehran at Twilight."?Brad Gooch, author of City Poet "A remarkable meditation on violence, and on all the ways one bears witness to pain. Abdoh depicts a pulsating portrait of Tehran?a mad city of entrenched loyalties and corrupt alliances, of smugglers, hustlers, and lifelong runners, of forged documents and lost corpses."?Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz The year is 2008. Reza Malek's life is modest but manageable?he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometime lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men. After a terse phone call from his childhood best friend in Iran, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, Reza finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend is embroiled with murderous Shiite militants; his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off with a lover before the revolution, is alive and well; while his own life is in danger. Against a backdrop of corrupt mullahs, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, Abdoh offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a compelling morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty. Salar Abdoh was born in Iran, and splits his time between Tehran and New York City, where he is co-director of the Creative Writing MFA Program at the City College of New York.

Seen and Unseen teases out and explores how visual mediums construct visual cultures that often create limited perspectives of certain issues and groups. This volume focuses in particular on the representation of Islam and Muslims. It deals with fixed and stereotypical visual representations and explores alternative and challenging visual representations that reconstruct and dismantle existing belief systems. It approaches the topic from a vantage point of diverse multiple perspectives. Covering issues from Brunei, Iran, Egypt, and England and cyberspace, the essays in this volume examine the visual cultures of how Islam and Muslims are understood, misunderstood, misrepresented, or even embraced visually. Scholars in this volume draw on historical paintings, books and their covers, photography, and news to demonstrate the diversity and sometimes contradictory visual cultures that construct and adhere meaning to how Islam and Muslim people are seen. Contributors: Hoda Afshar, Jared Ahmed, Syed Farid Alatas, Sanaz Fotouhi, Christiane Gruber, Layla Hendow, Raihana M.M., Bruno Starrs and Esmaeil Zeiny.

Informed by firsthand experience on the battlefronts of Iraq and Syria, Abdoh captures the horror, confusion, and absurdity of combat from a seldom-glimpsed perspective that expands our understanding of the war novel. "Abdoh's powerful novel follows an Iranian war reporter who is torn between his wearying job on the front lines and a civilian existence that he finds increasingly alienating. The book is as much a reflection on memory and art as it is a war story, and Abdoh's writing captures beautifully the absurdity of both the battlefield and modern life." —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia, is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, for some, a passing weekend affair. After weeks spent dodging RPGs, witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity, Saleh returns to civilian life in Tehran but finds it to be an unbearably dislocating experience. Pursued by his official handler from state security, opportunistic colleagues, and the woman who broke his heart, Saleh has reason to again flee from everyday life. Surrounded by men whose willingness to achieve martyrdom both fascinates and appalls him, Saleh struggles to make sense of himself and the turmoil in his midst. An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Out of Mesopotamia follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers—from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo—but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true

A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which a man struggles to find his place in an Iran on the brink of combusting Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman’s death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions of his own family history, throughout which his late brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran’s underground, defied their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity. Issa soon finds himself thrown into a circle of people living on the margins of society, negotiating a razor-like code of conduct that rewards loyalty and encourages aggression and intolerance in equal measure. As the city explodes around him, Issa realizes that it is the little acts of kindness that matter most, the everyday humanity of individuals finding love and doing right by one another. Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.

Crime fiction set in Iran—including a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best PI Short Story. “Tehran Noir is not only a solid crime collection, but an illuminating look into day-to-day life in the Middle East, with religious and political implications galore, as well as racial tensions bubbling just beneath the surface. . . . The stories in Tehran Noir aren’t always easy to read, but they are engaging in the extreme.” —San Francisco Book Review Includes brand-new stories by Gina B. Nahai, Salar Abdoh, Lily Farhadpour, Azardokht Bahrami, Yourik Karim-Masihi, Vali Khalili, Farhaad Heidari Gooran, Aida Moradi Ahani, Mahsa Mohebali, Majed Neisi, Danial Haghighi, Javad Afhami, Sima Saeedi, Mahak Taheri, and Hossein Abkenar. “A stellar and diverse cast of Iranian writers. . . . A collection such as this is able to bring Iran to life for the foreign reader in a way other fiction and non-fiction cannot. . . . Superb.” —PopMatters

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.

"An important and timely book that should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States and Iran went from close allies to enduring enemies." -The Washington Post "Deserves a spot on the short list of must-read books on United States-Iran relations." -The New York Times The dramatic secret history of the undeclared, ongoing war between the U.S. and Iran. The United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war since the 1970s. This conflict has frustrated multiple American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several U.S. administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground on virtually every page of The Twilight War. From the Iranian Revolution to secret negotiations between Iran and the United States after 9/11, from Iran’s nuclear program to the secretive and deadly role of Qasem Soleimani, Crist brings vital new depth to our understanding of “the Iran problem”—and what the future of this tense relationship may bring.