In this insightful study of Iranian cultural history and national identity, Shahrokh Meskoob, one of Iran’s leading intellectuals, reviews the roles of three social classes, the courtiers and bureaucratic officials (ahl-e divan), the religious scholars (ulama), and the Muslim Gnostics (Sufi poets and writers), in the development and refinement of the Persian language..[read more>>]

“From a gifted writer delightful, funny, evocative, enlightening, nostalgic stories about growing up in Iran in the 1940s. A must-read for anyone who wants to know how traditional, conservative Iranian households dealt with modernization.[read more>>]

“From a gifted writer delightful, funny, evocative, enlightening, nostalgic stories about growing up in Iran in the 1940s. A must-read for anyone who wants to know how traditional, conservative Iranian households dealt with modernization.[read more>>]

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This book offers a uniquely intimate look at Soltan Ahmad Mirza, was a prince—the forty-ninth son of Fath Ali Shah Qajar, who ruled Iran from 1797 to 1834.[read more>>]

All memoirs bring the past into the present, but only a few manage to illuminate both simultaneously. French Hats in Iran, a quietly insightful masterpiece of remembrance, belongs in that select group.[read more>>]

“Candid and revealing[offers] a wealth of insights into Iranian society and culture.” – William Quandt, Foreign Affairs.[read more>>]

“Milani shows that long before the European Renaissance generated the radical ideas that eventually reshaped Europe and the United States, Persian statesmen, artists, and intellectuals had formulated ideas that strikingly anticipate those of modernity.…” – Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University .[read more>>]

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“An exceptional, emotionally blooded memoir. . . . That this [memoir] turns out to be a breathtaking example of the quiet, selfless gorgeousness of the memorist’s art is the reader’s good fortune. Milani offers classically ordered writing about character, place, and time. . . . The entire memoir is infused with the perversity, nightmarishness, and occasional strange sweetness of growing up amid religious rule and ritual.[read more>>]