Kamin Mohammadi was born in Iran in 1969 and exiled to the UK in 1979. She is a journalist, travel writer and broadcaster and co-authored The Lonely Planet Guide to Iran. She is currently living in Italy. The Cypress Tree is her first book, telling the story of 20th-century Iran through three generations of Iranian women – Kamin, her mother and her grandmother.
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"Iranian literature is as rich and varied as the rest of our millennia-old culture, but only a few works are known in the west, particularly when it comes to our modern literature. Indeed, it can be hard to wade through the shelves of sensationalist blockbusters about Iran's terrorist threat to get to anything more nuanced or real – one of the motivations behind the writing of my book.
"In The Cypress Tree, I wanted instead to recount tales of the beautiful country where I grew up, with a rich history that has influenced so much in western culture, where love and belly laughs were plentiful, where turquoise tiles glittered on walls, and where there was jasmine on the breeze and ruby-red pieces of pomegranate lovingly peeled by an army of aunts.
"I wanted to provide a little balance to the familiar accounts of jailings, beatings, brutality and ignorance – this is just a little (although terrible) part of life in Iran, and I tried to paint a truer and richer picture of my country and our modern history. The books below are my picks of Iranian literature – with a few books not by Iranians but which illuminate Iran itself and are vital in understanding our country – and although they don't begin to do justice to our greatest poets and books, they are a starting point for those interested in knowing more."
1. Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) by Abolqasem Ferdowsi
Written in the 10th century, this is our Iliad and Odyssey rolled into one. More than 30 years in the writing, this epic poem contains 60,000 verses and tells the mythical – and actual – history of Iran, from the Creation until the Muslim conquest of Iran in the 7th century. This work saved and recorded Iranian national identity, and was responsible for keeping our language – and culture – distinct from the Arabs'. It contains not just heroic tales of battle but also love stories and philosophical tracts. This is our reference to all things pre-Arabic – as well a favourite place to find a baby's name.
2. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi
These graphic stories are splendid – not just in their deceptively simple black and white drawings, but in the way Satrapi manages to tell the story of the revolution in Iran and her subsequent exile and return from the irreverent point of view of the rebellious child that she was. The history of Iran presented in her book is not exactly objective but no matter, these books are funny and moving.
3. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran by Roy Mottahedeh
First published in 1985, Harvard professor Mottahedeh's book is a must-read for anyone interested not just in Ayatollah Khomeini, the roots of the revolution and the origins of the Islamic Republic, but for fans of a good novel too – it's written as compellingly as a good thriller. He sets the biography of Khomeini against the backdrop of Iranian religious thought, from Zoroaster to key modern-day Islamic thinkers, contextualising our modern history – and his style is a pleasure to read.
4. The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar
In Iran there are a whole host of mystical medieval poets and thinkers – Rumi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Khayyam – each one a Shakespeare in their own right, so it is hard to pick just one. The Conference of the Birds is a 12th-century masterpiece, written by another Persian Sufi, Attar. It is an allegorical 4,500-line poem telling the tale of when all the birds of the world gathered to try and find a just ruler. Setting out the mystical doctrine of Sufism in rhyming couplets, it is a deeply spiritual piece of work which can also be enjoyed as pure literature.
5. The Story of Leyla and Majnun by Nizami
The most famous telling of a celebrated love story, this 12th-century epic is thought to have inspired everyone from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) to Derek and the Dominos (who named their album after Leyla). Of course, in the great Iranian mystical tradition, it is also an allegory of the soul's search for God.
6. Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad
Our most significant female poet, who broke conventions and taboos when she started publishing her poems – full of sensuality, desire and longing – in 1950/60s Iran. She suffered for her frank outspokenness – her only child was taken away and she spent time in mental institutions.
7. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
A classic of modern Persian literature, Hedayat's small novel is dream-like, its hero demented and delusional. Persian literature has always depended on allegory but whereas poets like Nizami were using it as a means to bring people to God, modern Iranian writers use it to protect themselves from the punishment of the state. This was as true when Hedayat was writing this book (1937, under Reza Shah) as it is today.
8. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle Eastern Terror by Stephen Kinzer
Kinzer's easy-to-read account of the CIA-orchestrated coup in Iran in 1953, which overthrew the beloved prime minister Mossadegh after he nationalised the oil industry illuminates a vitally important piece of Iranian modern history that is unknown to many westerners. Given that this episode contains the roots of the corruption of the Shah's regime, Iran's colonisation by America in all but name, and ultimately the roots of the revolution itself, it is vital reading.
9. Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński
Legendary Polish foreign correspondent Kapuściński was in Iran throughout the revolution and his pared-down account of the events of those days is gripping and insightful. He has enormous understanding and the ability to tell a harrowing story in the most graceful way, while also preserving a delightful sense of the absurd. He is unusual in that he does not subscribe to an Orientalist point of view – and so is able to comment on the events of the day and the peculiarities of the Iranian character and system with objectivity – even affection – but without the usual implicit sense of superiority that western writers tend to slip into when writing about Iran.
10. Daiey Jan Napoleon (My Uncle Napoleon) by Iraj Pezeshkzad
First published in 1973 in Tehran, this rambunctious novel entered the national psyche when it was turned into a television series. Set during the Allied occupation of Iran during the second world war, it concentrates on the antics of an extended family who all live in an old-fashioned compound, ruled over by a paranoid patriarch, the Uncle. Lively and funny, the novel often plays on the Iranian tendency to think the British behind everything that happens in Iran.
