In The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, a novel shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, the 1979 Islamic Revolution serves as the engine of the plot, but the story is less about grand historical events than about the intimate, irreversible changes wrought on ordinary lives. The book gives voice to characters who, without fiction, might remain unheard.
The polyphonic narrative unfolds across four chapters and a prologue, each chapter separated by a decade, following five members of a single Iranian family after the revolution. The prologue imagines a free Iran in an unspecified but near future.
Wishing for the 'real revolution'
Behzad, a young communist teacher, and his two comrades, Sohrab and Peyman, are politically active in the early post-revolutionary period. They aspire to bring about what they call the “real revolution” — a people’s revolution within institutions — each hoping for a prosperous, independent Iran.
The ideological rift between Peyman and his comrades is central to understanding the failed attempts at democracy and reform in modern Iran. Peyman, an artist who always carries a camera, is more interested in life than in revolution. He became politicized only after 1979, unlike his friends who were already immersed in Marxist texts. A pragmatic realist, Peyman believes that for people to stage a genuine revolution, what matters most are food, water, and education.
Behzad, an atheist who views the world with the fervor of a zealot, values books on successful revolutions and armed insurgency. He dismisses the masses as unsophisticated and superstitious, convinced that he and his comrades already represent the people. Early in the novel, Behzad observes of Peyman’s Islamist brother: “Amin would probably agree with us when it comes to the use of weapons and violence but only in the service of a god he never believed in before.” Behzad argues for the necessity of violence, failing to see that violence committed in the name of god and violence committed in the name of the people are fundamentally the same — both serving illegitimate power.
Behzad, described by his family as incapable of hurting a fly, only grasps the true cost of violence a decade later, while living in exile in Germany, when he learns that Peyman has been executed. The death of “a man who has understood something, but isn’t managing to convince everyone else” is a tragedy and a metaphor for the death of rationality in a land where believers of all stripes resort to violence as the only solution.
'Language is the only homeland'
Behzad falls in love with Nahid, a fellow comrade, and marries her before they are forced underground and into exile in Germany. There, the narrative shifts to Nahid’s perspective. She is haunted by a stifling loneliness as she struggles to learn the “cold language” of her new home, echoing the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz’s observation: “Language is the only homeland.”
Cultural untranslatability lies behind Nahid’s melancholia and fits of crying, prompting her daughter Laleh to say: “I really don’t want to know what it feels like to be Mama.” The novel suggests that it is impossible to fully transition into a new culture without losing aspects of the self — just as a poem can never be fully translated without losing nuance. Nahid reflects on how their German friends perceive her husband: “They would never print a poem of Hafez; they would never understand it even if it was translated.” She realizes that a translated poem, exiled in a foreign language, mirrors her own exile.
Nahid’s need to learn a new language and way of being makes her feel like a child. An educated, intelligent woman, she fears she might teach her daughter errors while helping with homework.
A new generation of estrangement
The emotional gap caused by language and culture extends to the next generation. Laleh narrates her 1999 trip to Iran with her mother, made possible by the more open atmosphere after the election of a reformist president. She is loved by her extended family, but feels estranged — as when she wants to say “Your eyes see beautifully,” a phrase she has recently learned, but thinks it would be wrong, that she would only be parroting it.
Laleh’s life is less lonely than her mother’s, but more complicated in certain ways. Nahid has a country where she is accepted and understood; Laleh experiences moments that make her wonder whether she feels fully at home in Germany either. She buys a magazine and the seller questions whether she can read the language; she thinks no one takes her father seriously when he speaks with grammatical mistakes; she worries someone might realize they are foreigners.
The novel’s exploration of exile and identity resonates beyond Iran, touching on themes familiar to diaspora communities across Asia. For readers interested in the broader regional context, the story echoes the experiences of those displaced by political upheaval in countries like Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who have consolidated power and directed policy from the shadows since the revolution. The novel also offers a personal counterpoint to the geopolitical analysis of Iran's conflict becoming a forever war, showing how grand historical forces reshape individual lives.
