Series
Curated reading paths.
Follow structured sequences of essays on history, rupture, power, memory, and the long work of reconstruction.
Before the Fracture — The Making of Iran
A civilisation shaped over centuries—through empire, invasion, faith, and renewal. This series traces the formation of Iran before the modern era, exploring how identity, culture, and continuity were built long before the fractures of the twentieth century.
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Iran's Black January
Iran disappeared twice. The first disappearance happened slowly over decades. It disappeared behind diplomacy, negotiations, official speeches, religious language, international forums, carefully managed interviews, and the smiling face presented to the world. Beyond Iran’s borders stood the image of a state speaking the language of sovereignty, resistance, and civilization. Inside Iran, another country lived quietly beneath it. A country of lowered voices, private grief, censored lives, prisons spoken about in whispers, and citizens learning that silence itself could become survival. Then came Black January. The second disappearance happened in days.
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Living Shahnameh
A series tracing how ancient Persian memory re-emerges in the present, where myth and reality converge, and a nation finds itself reliving the patterns of tyranny, resistance, and the enduring search for justice.
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The Theft of a Future
The Theft of a Future is a ten-part series examining what has happened to Afghan women and girls since the Taliban returned to power, not through a single restriction, but through the gradual narrowing of an entire life. Education, marriage, work, movement, healthcare, motherhood, legal autonomy and even the right to be heard in public have become interconnected boundaries determining how a woman may live and what a girl may hope to become. Yet this is not a series written only about victims. It is also about the women who continue to teach behind closed doors, the girls who refuse to abandon their books, the mothers protecting their daughters' ambitions, and those who continue to resist being erased. A future is rarely stolen in a single moment; sometimes it is taken piece by piece, until one day a generation looks back and discovers how much of its life has disappeared.
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Anatomy of Iran — The Unravelling
A study of how a nation loses its balance. From the late Qajar period to the present day, this series examines the forces—internal and external—that reshaped Iran’s state, society, and direction, revealing how control, resistance, and memory continue to define its path.
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The Memory of Fire
The Memory of Fire is a philosophical and historical series exploring the ethical foundations of ancient Iranian civilization through themes of Zoroastrianism, Mithraic thought, exile, memory, truth, and cultural survival. Rather than focusing on nostalgia or political division, the series examines how civilizations preserve dignity, moral responsibility, and human connection across centuries of conquest, transformation, and displacement. At its core, the project asks a universal question: what allows human beings and societies to remain humane in times of darkness, fragmentation, and forgetting? The “fire” becomes both a historical symbol and a metaphor for conscience, truth, and the enduring search for moral clarity.
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Understanding Iran Without Iranians: Iran Was only the Title
What happens when an event promises to understand Iran but spends most of its time discussing everyone except Iranians? This four-part series explores a deeper problem that extends far beyond a single discussion in Ireland. It examines how a nation of more than eighty million people has become trapped beneath narratives constructed by governments, academics, activists and commentators, while the experiences of those living under one of the world's most repressive regimes are repeatedly overshadowed. The result is a remarkable paradox: Iran remains constantly discussed, yet increasingly misunderstood.
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