Skip to main content

Iran

Fiction

To write and to live in the shadow

The first blog was started in Iran in the beginning of 2001. Since then, the blog culture within the country has grown and there are over 70,000 blogs by Iranians, both inside and outside the country...

Text: Marzieh Rasouli May 06 2014
Article

The Mullahs’ inroads into social media

Internet freedom is highly restricted in Iran. Low speed connections, blocked sites and internet blackouts are just a couple of examples of how the government attempts to strangle internet. An...

Text: Anonymous May 06 2014
Fiction

Iran: The day we pack our bags

For many years, author Roya Zarrin held a popular yoga class in her hometown in Iran. But since it was also a place where forbidden literature could be discussed fairly openly, it attracted the...

Text: Roya Zarrin October 24 2013
Article

What about democracy in Iran?

Sanctions against Iran tighten with every year that passes—all in an effort to force the regime to account for its nuclear program. How do the sanctions affect the Iranian people and their fight for...

Text: Trita Parsi June 10 2013
Fiction

Drunkenness

Author Saeed Tabatabaee was one year old when the Islamic Revolution took place. He belongs to the generation of young people who has grown up in the regime's big brother society—always guarded...

Text: Saeed Tabatabaee June 10 2013
Interview

Tehran girls just want to have fun

Over 30 years have passed since Iran's Islamic revolution. An entire generation of young women has grown up without knowing any other society than the one created by the conservative mullahs—a society...

Text: Mojgan Ayyari June 10 2013
Article

“Iran's economy is on the road to collapse”

Inflation, rising unemployment and an irresponsible economic policy seems to be the Ahmadinejad administration's political legacy. The next president will face severe challenges, writes financial...

Text: Sara Damavandan June 10 2013
Poetry

The songs will disappear one by one

Alireza Behnam, born in 1973 in Tehran, is one of the most influential young poets in Iran right now. Since 1991, he has published four collections of poems and translated a number of books into...

Text: Alireza Behnam June 10 2013
Article

Creativity's battles with censorship

What happens to a country where many writers have shelved writing or have given up trying to get published? The author and publisher, Arash Hejazi, writes about self-censorship, which has taken root...

Text: Arash Hejazi June 10 2013
Article

Iran strangles Internet

When the internet was introduced in Iran in the early 1990s, the young generation was given an opportunity to circumvent the regime's information monopoly and put themselves in contact with the...

Text: Anonymous Illustration: Johan Rutherhagen June 10 2013
Poetry

Five poems from prison

On September 7 2011, the police arrested the poet Alireza Roshan, who was accused of being part of a nonconformist minority group named “Gonabadi”. He was convicted on the basis of Article 610 of the...

Text: Alireza Roshan June 10 2013
Article

How censorship makes itself absurd?

The Iranian regime is full of paradoxes when it comes to censorship. Hossein Shahrabi, Iranian publisher and translator, emphasize the lack of a consistent censorship law which means that the regime...

Text: Hossein Shahrabi June 10 2013
Article

“Buying alcoholic beverages takes 17 minutes”

The Islamic Republic does not allow alcohol. In the wake of other social problems, alcohol abuse has increased, even in Iran. Under an ideologically shiny surface, one can find the same social...

Text: Alireza Akbari June 10 2013
Poetry

Janus face

President Ahmadinejad states that homosexuality does not exist in Iran and it is a crime according to the country's laws. What is even more rarely discussed is the perception of transsexuals, and how...

Text: Ramesh Safavi June 10 2013

Search