Shah of Shahs

As usual at this hour I can hear gunfire from the depths of the invisible city. The shooting starts regularly at nine as if custom or tradition had fixed the hour

Following his father’s forced abdication by the Allies in 1941, the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran signified a moment of hope for a new era, free from persecution. However, despite the Shah’s bullish move towards Westernisation and social reform, the self-styled father of the nation enjoyed the riches of the country’s oil wealth and lived like a Western billionaire while the majority of the Iranian people lived in poverty. SAVAK secret police infiltrated everyday life, and those arrested were tortured first and questioned later. No one was above suspicion: friends, neighbours and even family members were all treated as potential informers. With tensions running high, traditionalists increasingly demanded a return to Islamic rule, and this religious fervour combined with anti-Western sentiment to create the perfect revolutionary storm.

The award-winning journalist and human rights activist Maziar Bahari has provided a new introduction for this edition, in which he describes Shah of Shahs as ‘a book about Iran, tyranny, revolution, memory and photography’. A thoroughly researched and fascinating overview of the turbulent modern history of the country, it is also an eloquent – and at times poetic – book that is based on the author’s personal interpretation of events.