‘King of kings they called him, and they said, We rejoice in him, we rejoice in his wife and her beauty; they said, We love this country, and then we said, We love this country. We had to rejoice in his newborn son, for longer than we ever would a birth in our own family, his newborn son, in the far-off Palace of Flowers.’
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran
Written by Shida Bazyar
Translated by Ruth Martin
- Original language:
- German
- Shortlisted
- The International Booker Prize 2026
- Published by Scribe UK
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Set across four decades, from 1979 to 2009, this is a polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran
1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.
1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.
1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.
2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran is a moving novel about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Shida Bazyar
Shida Bazyar studied writing in Hildesheim, northern Germany, and worked in youth education for many years
More about Shida Bazyar 
Ruth Martin
Ruth Martin studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German
More about Ruth Martin Through cycles of exile and return, we follow an Iranian family across four decades – and learn what it means to always live in hope. The pages pulse with heartache and humour
The International Booker Prize 2026 judges
What the judges said
‘What actually happens after a revolution? Through cycles of flight and return, exile and assimilation, Shida Bazyar takes readers through four decades in the lives of an Iranian family – two of them young revolutionaries, Behzad and Nahid, who flee to West Germany with their children. One generation yearns for their homeland; the other makes new beginnings; some visit home, some dream of return, some find going back too painful. The pages of The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran pulse with solidarities and betrayal, with heartache and humour. And for all exiles, migrants, once-and-future revolutionaries, Bazyar captures what it means to always live in hope.’
What the critics said
Rhoda Kwan, The Saturday Paper
‘In Ruth Martin’s lilting translation of the German novel, Bazyar’s lyrical sentences exude a deep sensitivity to the “permanent pain” of the relentless yearning for home… A quietly beautiful exploration of the trauma of losing one’s homeland to a savage regime, the novel is testament to how hope and the revolutionary spirit endure in the face of crushing tyranny, how courage cannot be fully stamped out.’
Other nominated books by Ruth Martin
Tumbling down the years, great characters and greater relationships come and go, in Nino Haratischvili’s compelling epic family drama
