“Funny, incisive, frightening and eminently skillful."—New York Times The year is 1978, the tumultuous period leading up to the Iranian Revolution. While visiting Iran with her husband, Chloe Fowler is left to travel alone after he is summoned home. Much to her surprise, she finds herself drawn to the country, intoxicated by each unfamiliar sight that reminds her how far from home she really is, both comforted and unsettled by the group of foreign and Iranian physicians and their wives who take her in. However, her exhilaration crashes when odd, often frightening events begin to occur, exposing the darker side of this "colonial life." Chloe is about to be liberated from everything she has ever known—in a place where her ordinary notions of reason and reality will run headlong into a wall of intrigue, and where every idea she has about herself will be put to the test. Persian Nights follows Chloe on a voyage through the seductively inexplicable, and has all the qualities one expects from the gifted author of Le Divorce—the quirky, vivid atmosphere; the intelligent, humane voice; the compelling narrative. Once again, Diane Johnson delivers an entertaining novel of an appealing woman caught up in a mysterious world of change and intrigue.

Chloe, a contented and unliberated wife and mother, follows her physician husband on a visit to Iran. When he is summoned home, she has no choice but to continue on alone.

"With a new afterword by the author"--Cover.

Persian hospitality and contemporary lifestyle in some of the finest Iranian hotels The first ever guide to the country's hostels and hoteliers, featuring extraordinary photos and immersive texts. With special travel entries on wind towers, concept stores, mud houses, and espresso culture. etc.

How did Iran remain distinctively Iranian in the centuries which followed the Arab Conquest? How did it retain its cultural distinctiveness after the displacement of Zoroastrianism - state religion of the Persian empire - by Islam? This latest volume in "The Idea of Iran" series traces that critical moment in Iranian history which followed the transformation of ancient traditions during the country's conversion and initial Islamic period. Distinguished contributors (who include the late Oleg Grabar, Roy Mottahedeh, Alan Williams and Said Amir Arjomand) discuss, from a variety of literary, artistic, religious and cultural perspectives, the years around the end of the first millennium CE, when the political strength of the 'Abbasid Caliphate was on the wane, and when the eastern lands of the Islamic empire began to be take on a fresh 'Persianate' or 'Perso-Islamic' character. One of the paradoxes of this era is that the establishment throughout the eastern Islamic territories of new Turkish dynasties coincided with the genesis and spread, into Central and South Asia, of vibrant new Persian language and literatures. Exploring the nature of this paradox, separate chapters engage with ideas of kingship, authority and identity and their fascinating expression through the written word, architecture and the visual arts.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO IRAN If you announce that you are going to Iran, someone will certainly advise you not to go. Ignore them, for this is one of the most exciting countries on Earth. This book will take you all the way through 5,000 years of Persian history into today's modern Iran. It is about the places and history of Persia's "One Thousand and One Nights" and how those stories have shaped the modern Iran that it is today. Many westerners, especially women (including some of my friends), feel hesitant about travel to Iran. This is because the western media only reports kidnappings, terrorist activities and endless wars in the region. This has been particularly since the 9/11 attacks, when a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists, a Wahabi religious group from Saudi Arabia, attacked the United States. These attacks resulted in 2,977 fatalities and causing long-term consequences for the Middle East and the rest of the world. With the US invasion of many countries in the region including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. The so-called 'War on Terror' resulted in countless casualties and tremendous human suffering in these countries. Interestingly, Iran managed to stay out of these US led wars until today, although President Trump was awfully close to bombing Iran towards the end of his term. Fortunately, he was not re-elected to office in 2020. This book helps you prepare for a romantic tour in Iran, should you choose to and are able to do so. We will visit the authentic historical places of Persia's "The One Thousand and One Nights" stories and see Iran from an insider's perspective. This is an opportunity to explore the origin of these stories from our childhood, from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" to "Sinbad the Sailor". In Chapter 2 Brief history of Persia: Iran is home to one of the world's oldest and continuous civilizations and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, which stretched from Eastern Europe to the Indus Valley, making it one of the largest empires in history. In Chapter 3 Amazing inventions from Persia. Many Philosophers, Scientists, Medics, Chemists, Architects, Physicians, Geologists, Psychologists and Mathematicians from Persia and at that time, were leading the Ancient World and delivered the basis for today's inventions. In Chapter 4 A historical tour of two weeks through Iran. The Persian Empire has left remnants of an extraordinarily rich cultural heritage, not only in today's Iran, but also across the entire ancient empire territory. From Persepolis, the ancient capital of Persia, to the World Heritage sites in Esfahan and Yazd, we will discover them all. Chapter 5 The discrepancy between the western media representations of Iran and of the real conditions in Iran by some highly researched data and well-grounded facts. We shall explore the day-to-day life of Iranian people on the streets. Chapter 6 Diversity, which is in the DNA of Iran and its root are in the cultural heritage of Persia. Many tribes of Turkish, Armenians, Georgians, Jewish and Caucasians migrated to Iran building one of the most diverse societies on Earth. Chapter 7 Iran's politics today. The political system in Iran is shaped by its history, its diversity and by its unique geopolitical position. In Chapter 8 The illegal US sanctions on Iran. In October 2018, the UN's "International Court of Justice (ICJ)" declared the US sanctions on Iran as illegal. We will discover the reasons behind these US led sanctions. In Chapter 9 Despite all the human suffering caused by the US sanctions, Iranians have shown great strength, perseverance and resilience. Iran has made great progress in many areas. A substantial part of the proceeds from the sales of this book goes towards supporting the UNHCR .

In a 2004 meeting marking the Arabian Nights' tercentennial at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenb'ttel, Germany, nineteen international scholars presented their work on the transnational aspects of the Arabian Nights. This volume collects their papers, whose topics range from the history of the Arabian Nights manuscripts, to positioning the Nights in modern and postmodern discourse, to the international reception of the Nights in written and oral tradition. Essays are arranged in five sections. The first section contains essays on Galland's translation and its "continuation" by Jacques Cazotte. The second section treats specific characteristics of the Nights, including manuscript tradition, the transformations of a specific narrative pattern occurring in the Nights and other works of medieval Arabic literature, the topic of siblings in the Nights, and the political thought mirrored in the Nights. The essays in the third section deal with framing in relation to the classical Indian collection Panchatantra and as a general cultural technique, with particular attention to storytelling in the oral tradition of the Indian Ocean islands off the African coast. The two concluding and largest sections focus on various aspects of the transnational reception of the Nights. While the essays of the fourth section predominantly discuss written or learned tradition in Hawai'i, Swahili-speaking East Africa, Turkey, Iran, German cinema, and modern Arabic literature, the fifth section encompasses essays on the reception and role of the Nights in the oral tradition of areas as wide apart as Sicily, Greece, Afganistan, and Balochistan. A preface by Ulrich Marzolph unifies this volume. In view of the tremendous impact of the Arabian Nights on Western creative imagination, this collection will appeal to literary scholars of many backgrounds.

""The Nights of Tehran" is a story that takes place in the 1960s and 1970s, the years that led to the uprisings and tumult that toppled the monarchical regime and ended in the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution and the establishment of a theocracy in Iran. It is a story about the young people in those decades, the story of a generation, Alizadeh's own generation, which she called an idealistic generation of dreamers who believed in patriotism, freedom, justice, culture, and beauty. But it was also a "lost generation." "The Nights of Tehran" is also the story of Iran's capital city itself, albeit a Tehran that is schizophrenic. North Tehran, where much of the story takes place, is an affluent modern city with luxurious homes and gardens, whereas south Tehran, where a significant portion of the novel occurs, is poverty-stricken with dusty, windy, narrow alleyways and old dilapidated houses and flophouses. Alizadeh's Tehran is an imagined city, a construct of the creative mind of the writer. However, many readers who have lived or visited the Iranian capital city at that time will find the same city reflected in this novel"--

The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, published to coincide with the world tour of a magnificent musical and theatrical production directed by Tim Supple

What makes for an ideal slave-girl: beauty alone, or intelligence as well? Unfettered by political correctness, King Zinebi decides to settle the question by giving his vizir 10,000 gold pieces to buy the finest slave he can find. But when he purchases a beautiful, brilliant Persian girl, his son Noureddin inevitably falls in love with her. Now Noureddin and the fair Persian have only each other to cling to through tragedy, poverty, and courtly intrigues in this, the twenty-seventh of the 34 tales in the classic Arabian Nights collection, translated into English by Andrew Lang. A treasure-trove of timeless stories, the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights have been loved, imitated, and added to over many centuries. Similar to the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, the Arabian Nights are drawn from the folklore of India, Iran and the Middle East, and were collected in Arabic versions throughout the medieval period; others were added as recently as the eighteenth century. These stories of the exotic East have been popularised for new generations by film adaptations such as Disney’s Aladdin, starring Robin Williams and Gilbert Gottfried in 1992, and Will Smith in 2019, and Dreamworks’ Sinbad, starring Brad Pitt and Michelle Pfeiffer. They continue to inspire writers as varied as Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman, while numerous Bollywood and manga versions attest to their popularity around the world. These stories of magic, adventure and romance have shaped readers’ imaginations for generations, and are sure to be retold for years to come. This selection was translated by Andrew Lang from the French versions by Antoine Galland, who was the first to include the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba. Born in Scotland in 1844, Lang was a scholar of ancient Greek, a journalist, historian, novelist and poet, and the author of 25 popular collections of fairy tales; his edition of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment was published in 1898. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1906, and died in 1912.