Nicholas Hopton

I really enjoyed this opportunity to review three books on Iran for @FT A modern tragedy: the Iranian revolution and its legacy. Three new books approach the topic of the country’s past and its people from different directions. Homa Katouzian’s Iran and the Revolution offers a sweeping account of the forces that led to the revolution of 1979 and its long aftermath. Robert Templer’s The Shah’s Party and the Iranian Revolution that Followed returns to the imperial pageantry of Persepolis, the ancient ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid empire, and the illusions and delusions of the late Pahlavi state. Mahvash Sabet’s Open Wide the Doors: A Memoir of Faith, Hope and Freedom in Iran takes us inside the Islamic republic’s brutal prison system through the experience of a Baháʼí leader whose imprisonment becomes a testimony of dignity, endurance and responsibility to her community. Read together, the books suggest that Iran’s modern tragedy is not only the fall of one regime and the rise of another, nor a series of historical mishaps by ideological leadership or foreign intervention. It is the repeated refusal of the state to acknowledge the society it seeks to command.giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic… via @financialtimes