“The Iranian Diary”: Anatomy of Paranoia in Three Acts

Why is “The Iranian Diary” cycle not merely a spy thriller, but a chillingly precise diagnosis of our times?

In contemporary literature, Iran usually appears in one of two guises: either as a caricatured “Axis of Evil” populated by mad ayatollahs, or as an exotic backdrop for tear-jerking tales of oppression. In his Iranian Diary cycle, the author chooses a third, far more complex path. He portrays Iran as a vast laboratory where experiments are conducted not only on the atom, but on the human soul. And he does so with great love: for the country, the religion, and the characters.

The cycle, consisting of three novellas—“Isfahan”, “Shiraz”, and “Fordo”—is a genre chameleon. It begins as a cold procedural thriller in the vein of John le Carré, takes a sharp turn into intellectual alternate history, and concludes as a powerful post-apocalyptic drama.

“Isfahan”: Espionage as an Exact Science

The first novella immerses us in the sterile world of Dr. Zahra Mousavi, a nuclear physicist working at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program. The author works brilliantly with the atmosphere of paranoia. Here, betrayal is not a shot in the back, but an error in a formula. Here, love is measured in half-lives, and prayer is the only method to organize chaos.

The author’s greatest discovery is the language. The characters think in categories of physics. Loyalty is likened to a crystal lattice, doubt to entropy. The espionage tradecraft is equally non-trivial: instead of banal dead drops, we find codes hidden in the verses of Hafez and secret chats on World of Tanks forums.

But behind the technocratic facade lies a Greek tragedy. Zahra tries to save her children from the system she herself is building, failing to notice that the primary enemy is sitting at her table, drinking morning tea. The finale of Isfahan leaves the reader with a sense of claustrophobia: the trap has snapped shut, yet all reality delaminates like uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.

“Shiraz”: Architecture of the Shadow

If the first book answers the question “how?”, the prequel, Shiraz, answers the question “why?”. And this answer is shocking. The author transports us to 1997, the era of hope and the “Iranian Perestroika.”

Here, he executes a dizzying culturological twist. Zahra’s family history turns out to be tightly interwoven with the birth of one of the darkest political doctrines of modernity. The heroine’s father and uncle, attempting to shield Islam from Western influence, formulate the concepts of “Tradition without God” and the “Corporate State.”

The author plays masterfully with reality: the theories of Iranian theologians in the late 90s mirror the ideas of Western neoreactionaries (NRx) and adherents of the Dark Enlightenment fashionable today. It turns out that the most radical ideas of Silicon Valley were conceived on the dusty carpets of Shiraz as a warning, only to become an instruction manual. This transforms a family saga into a global cautionary tale: ideas are viruses, and they know no borders.

“Fordo”: Radioactive Catharsis

The third part is the emotional peak of the cycle. The year is 2025. The war everyone feared has begun. Shifting the focus from the cold intellectual Zahra to her daughter Nasrin—a stroke of genius—allows us to see the catastrophe through the eyes of “Generation Z,” who react to the end of the world with cynicism and black humor (“Humanism of 500-pound caliber”).

The scenes in the village of Abyaneh, under radioactive rain, where the children of the killer and the mother of the victim break bread, are written with piercing authenticity. There is no pathos here, only sticky fear and the taste of metal in the mouth.

The resolution in the Fordo bunker turns everything upside down. Salvation comes not from heroes, but from professionals willing to bargain with their conscience. Zahra’s “transmutation” is not just the extraction of uranium; it is the alchemical transformation of guilt into duty—if not to the country, then to her own children.

Having read it all, the reader may remain bewildered: Who is the traitor? Who is the hero? The author’s answer: these are the wrong questions. The right question is: what does a person do when all options are bad?

Verdict

The Iranian Diary is prose of the highest caliber. The author has created a world where the dry lines of VEVAK protocols hit the nerves harder than descriptions of explosions.

This is a book about how the System—be it Iranian theocracy, Western corporatocracy, or the laws of physics—always wins. But within this System, a human can survive if they learn to be a “point of equilibrium.”

Yes, this is not light reading. These are dense, intellectually rich texts that demand attention and a willingness to reread. There are no car chases or shootouts (although there are bombings… Wait! There is a chase, too). But there is something contemporary prose catastrophically lacks: respect for the reader.

The author does not spoon-feed. He trusts. He believes the reader will assemble the solitaire game from the scattered cards—dossiers, protocols, memories, dreams—themselves. And when the cards finally align, the reader will discover they are looking not at the history of an Iranian family, but into a mirror.

Because paranoia is not an Iranian disease. It is the disease of the century. And The Iranian Diary is its precise, ruthless, and strangely beautiful diagnosis.

Who should read this: Those who love Umberto Eco for intellectual puzzles, the series Homeland and Tehran for tension, and believe that good literature should make the reader smarter.

Farhad Mohammadi, specially for مهر نیوز