Literature and Arts from the Center of the World
An interview with an actress performing on stage in Iran without a hijab and who is no longer taking on roles that require official approval.
Bani Khoshnoudi's work is often inhabited by displacement and uprooting, explore themes of exile, modernity and its violences, memory and the invisible.
Nazli Tarzi reviews a book that challenges the uncritical view of eyeliner as a mere “exercise in vanity” and probes its use across many societies.
In the aftermath of a long war, a man in Iran searches for meaning, hopes for love, and struggles with the story of a whale.
When disaster strikes Maryam Haidari between Tunis and Tehran, the past seven years of her life as a poet, writer and translator are thrown into stark relief.
Four editors at The Markaz Review share some of their most anticipated titles publishing in 2024.
Novelist Négar Djavadi deploys non-fiction to question Iran's downing of an international flight out of Tehran.
Bavand Karim reviews the film "Holy Spider" by Ali Abbassi which coldly deconstructs the brutal nature of Iran’s religious patriarchy.
As this writer from Khuzestan remembers, the long Iran-Iraq war left many traces, names and ghosts in its eight-year wake.
Matt Broomfield reviews the first anthology of Kurdish science fiction, one that envisions new possibilities for Kurdish self-determination.
Joumana Haddad tells the true story of a young Iranian woman in Tehran, albeit vehicled by fiction.
Malu Halasa reviews the latest book on Iranian women photographers by Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh alongside two new books in a similar vein.
Post Oct. 7, Robin Yassin-Kassab assesses the West’s falsehoods and the challenges facing the Palestinians, the Israelis and the wider Middle East.
Dalia Sofer reviews Reza Aslan's latest book on American Howard Baskerville, "martyred" alongside revolutionary students in Iran in 1909.
TMR publishes World Picks special edition on its third anniversary, including events from Sept. 15-26, 2023.