The lights have been turned off in Iran, and the world has been left with very few personal accounts to paint the full picture of daily life. Since February 28, 2026, a staggering 98 per cent drop in internet traffic has plunged the nation into a digital darkness. This is not a technical glitch; it is a calculated ‘economic suicide’ by a regime that does not want the world to know what is happening in Iran, despite the billions that it is costing.
The Sahab Pardaz company — the architect of Iran’s internet filtering — became a primary target for strikes as it represents the physical wall between Iranian voices and the global ear.
In times of such profound censorship, the news seems only to tell us what is being destroyed. To understand what is being defended, we must turn to literature. This moves our focus beyond the headlines of blackouts, and strikes to the soul of the people who have used poetry and prose as a shield for centuries. In a world where the Iranian government can flip a switch to silence millions, books published outside the country are some of the few archives that cannot be “filtered.” Through this unfiltered lens, literature restores the granularity of individuals’ lives that statistics erase. Here are 2 novels you must read in an attempt to fully understand the tragedy in Iran.
The Bridge: For the Sun after Long Nights
Fatemeh Jamalpour & Nilo Tabrizy
If you want to understand how the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022 transformed into The Revolutionary Fire of 2026: You must read Fatemeh Jamalpour. A Knight-Wallace fellow who joined the thousands risking their lives in response to the killing of Masha Jina Amini – The 22 year-old Kurdish woman who refused to wear her hijab – Jamalpour’s latest work is not simply a memoir of life under the regime, but a primary source for a history that continues to be written. The book serves as a vital bridge, connecting the grassroots social protests to the full-scale revolutionary sentiment seen today. It is a testament to the bravery of those who stayed and those, like Jamalpour and Tabrizy, who act as a megaphone from the outside when the internal wires are cut.
The Haunting: Martyr!
Kaveh Akbar
Published two years ago, Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel has gained a chilling new relevance in the context of the 2026 blackouts. Martyr! follows Cyrus Shams, a young man navigating the intergenerational trauma of the 1979 Revolution and the 1988 massacres. Akbar’s prose is rightly celebrated for its “literary beauty,” but its power further lies in its exploration of identity. He illustrates how the ghosts of the past – the uncles lost to war, and the mothers lost to state violence – haunt the youth currently standing on the streets of Tehran. For Akbar’s characters, and for Iranians today, this is not just a political war; it is a struggle to reclaim an identity that the state has tried to bury under layers of ideology.
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash