This account of the Islamic Republic and its discontents told via six contrasting lives should be required reading<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult in 2026 to talk about Iran without confronting a lot of\u00a0crude certainty. The average non-Iranian gets their information in snippets, filtered by algorithms. The Iranian diaspora is too fractured and traumatised to educate everyone. And\u00a0the regime has muffled the voices inside its borders, responding to every major uprising with internet blackouts that hide both the people\u2019s rage and its own violent response. Meanwhile, its own network of misinformation spreads lies \u2013 that protesters are foreign instruments, that the unrest is manufactured by outsiders \u2013 exploiting legitimate western anxieties about intervention, Islamophobia, sanctions, oil and Israeli imperialism.<\/p>\n
Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati\u2019s powerful history of the Islamic republic is a badly needed corrective because it is at once an engrossing story and a balanced, meticulously researched primer on modern Iran (the clearest I\u2019ve ever read). And it is dramatic, personal and often heartbreaking, told through six lives lived at the forefront of the Iranian people\u2019s almost five-decade struggle with a corrupt regime that has stolen their freedoms, votes and many thousands of their lives.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/963c79e06894008a668f265e2e24e000c7431e50\/198_0_2500_2000\/master\/2500.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=c1a077f06d9b4d0a867c1a7576125ec6\" "\\"Stolen")
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"