Read it in the Green Room
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran
- writingLyrical, decade-by-decade voices
- atmosphereAching exile and longing
- settingIran and Germany, 1979 to 2009
Four family members, four decades (1979 to 2009), moving between Iran and Germany, each section in its own voice. Good for readers who like intimate family sagas about exile and revolution.
Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran
Shida Bazyar
The Green Room
Backstage of The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran.
Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.
A moment in the Green Room
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran · Shida Bazyar
The narrator
Of The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, as they are at your reading place
You
What happens next?
The narrator
“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”
Their knowledge stops where your reading does.
Who is in the room
Anyone who has walked on by your page.
The cast
Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.
The narrator
The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.
The author
As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.
The book itself
Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.
Before you go in
What critics and prize juries said.
Editorial synthesis
The Saturday Paper praised the translation's lilting quality and the novel's lyrical sensitivity to the pain of longing for home, while observing that the four sections feel plucked from broader, richer novels. Necessary Fiction likewise valued its refusal of easy answers on the personal and the political.
Drawn from The Saturday Paper, Necessary Fiction.
Recognition
- ShortlistInternational Booker Prize 2026
- LonglistBooker Prizes: Everything you need to know about the International Booker Prize 2026 longlist
- ShortlistBooker Prizes: The International Booker Prize 2026
- ListedFive Books: The Best Fiction Books: The 2026 International Booker Prize, recommended by Troy Onyango
- ShortlistBooker Prizes: Shortlist announced for the International Booker Prize 2026 supported by Bukhman Philanthropies
- LonglistBooker Prizes: Longlist announced for the International Booker Prize 2026 supported by Bukhman Philanthropies
How it stays unspoiled
Nothing past your page exists.
The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.
Get the book
One ebook. Yours.
US$31.99ebook · eBooks.com
Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.
Get the ebook at eBooks.comReading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.
The cast has been waiting for you.
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