Top ten Iranian books

Kamin Mohammadi is a writer, journalist and broadcaster specializing in Iran. She also writes travel books and is a magazine editor and lifestyle journalist with specialties in Italy, health, beauty, yoga and fashion. Her book, The Cypress Tree, is out this month in the UK from Bloomsbury.

At the Guardian she named her top ten Iranian books, including:

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.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue