The literature; The range of novels includes stories and poems, and there are many famous Iranian novels. There are so many different novels in the market that we are confused about choosing them. From the fifties, which can be called the golden age of literature, to the present and the nineties, there are novels that are worth reading. Reading any story, regardless of the author’s name, can always be fascinating and give us a mental picture of the author’s mentality and the characters we have not encountered in the real world. In this article, the best Iranian novels with different topics such as romance, religion, crime, family, etc. are presented.
“Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them.”
— Don Quixote
In this list, the order does not mean superiority, and most the attempts have been made to arrange the novels according to the year of publication and from old to new:
The story takes place in 1313 in Kermanshah and the main theme of the story is closely related to the miserable reality of women’s lives in the lower strata of society in those years. Ahokhanam is a hardworking and tolerant woman and a real example of an Iranian woman in those years who has no rights and that is why she is humiliated.
This novel is the story of a fan of a great painter named Makan who is looking for the secret of the suspicious death of a master in exile. The story is told by the principal of Makan’s school, who was fascinated by the “painting of his eyes” and feels that there is a secret behind the painted eyes in this painting. So he decides to find the woman who was the subject of the painting to decipher the painting.
This book is a novel written by Sadegh Chubak based on reality and the characters of the book are real. The story of the novel takes place in Tangestan and Bushehr. The story is about the life of a man named “Zair Mohammad”; He is a simple, family-friendly man who has been borrowed and spent by some port dwellers. This character decides to take severe revenge on them. Amir Naderi has made the film Tangsir based on this novel, starring Behrouz Vosoughi.
In this book, the author describes the foreign trip of a contemporary writer named Ibrahim to Europe. The book has several narratives and topics, and on the other hand, deals with the debates and life of Iranians living abroad, fugitives, and so on. On the other hand, in this novel, we see the trend of Ibrahim’s stories throughout the book.
۲۵. Mourners of Bill – Gholam Hossein Saedi
This book is a collection of eight continuous stories that describe the misery of a rural man named Bill. Saedi’s stories depict the sad world of poverty and misery of displaced peasants, wandering and aimless and homeless intellectuals of society. In this story, we also see that the villagers are suffering from social poverty, cultural poverty, superstitions and so on.
۲۴. Suvshun Simin Daneshvar is one of the best Iranian novels
This book is a story of love and sacrifice. The story of Suvshun is told in the midst of World War II, when British troops entered the southern borders of Iran and occupied it. Zari and Yousef attend the ruling girl’s wedding party. The ruler is trying to provoke a famine by selling the people’s food to the foreign army for his own interests, and Yusuf, who is not willing to sell the people’s food to the foreign army, wants to support the people. In this book, an attempt has been made to portray the golden look of Zari more.
- Once again, the city I loved – Nader Ebrahimi
This novel is the story of a farmer’s son who falls in love with Khan’s daughter. We are faced with a story that tells of prejudice and love for the homeland. The story is told that the love of the man or the narrator, after spending days fleeing from the city where they had given up their childhood to a young man, has now left him and returned home. The man in love returns to the city from which he once fled because of his love. “Autumn Dream Rain”, “Five Letters from Chamkhaleh Beach to Setareh Abad” and “End of Dream Rain” are the three parts of this book, the most romantic part of which can be considered “Autumn Dream Rain”.
۲۲. School principal – Jalal Al-Ahmad
The story begins when a teacher gets tired of being a teacher and decides to go to a school in the village to be the principal. Considering that the burden of his responsibilities will be reduced a little and his worries will be lessened; But unaware that the job of a manager is harder than a teacher. Throughout the story, we gradually encounter the problems and troubles that arise for him.
۲۱. Blind Owl – Sadegh Hedayat
The story of this novel is narrated in two parts. In the first part, the main character of the story, who lives in a remote area of the city, describes his eating pains. He is a painter who always draws the same role on the pen; The role of a girl who gives lotus flower branches to an old man. But in the second part, the narrator is a young and sick boy whose story is narrated in this new world and in the past. He tells his story in the shadow of an owl, devouring everything he writes. - Keyder – Mahmoud Dolatabadi
Klidar is the name of a mountain and a village in Khorasan and this book is the life story of an Iranian Kurdish family who moved to Sabzevar, Khorasan. This book tries to portray the tragic fate of Iranian peasants and nomadic tribes in the period when the politics of force prevailed. The author intended to involve the Tudeh Party in the story. Many critics and experts in the field of literature consider the key to Mahmoud Dolatabadi as the greatest and most enduring novel in Persian literature. - Neighbors – Ahmad Mahmoud
This book is Mahmoud’s first novel. The story is told by Khalid, a 15-year-old boy. A boy who lives in a slum in a multi-dwelling house with his family and whose father has prevented him from continuing his education. But the story has two scenes; The opening scene shows Khalid’s relationship with each individual and that he is in a dilemma between choosing between love and duty. In the second scene, the story continues in prison with the formation of new characters. - Side ship – Mehdi Shojaei
Knowing and understanding the lives of religious leaders allows us to use their guidance to choose the right path of life. This book deals with the biography of the last days of Hazrat Fatemeh Zahra. In this novel, the sufferings of Hazrat Zahra are narrated in the language of those around her and the author has tried to portray a corner of the unique position of this noble figure.
۱۷. Salouch vacancy – Mahmoud Dolatabadi
This is a realist novel that, as its name implies, begins with the departure of Salouch (male name). This novel tells the painful story of a rural woman living in a remote part of Iran. She tries to keep the family together after her husband’s sudden disappearance.
۱۶. A quiet romance – Nader Ebrahimi
The story of this book is related to before the revolution of 1957 in Iran, in which Gilmard, a teacher who also has political activities, meets and marries his wife Asal, who is Azeri, during one of his trips. Throughout the story, many problems and challenges occur for this man and woman, but nothing diminishes their love and they overcome the problems with their help. In this book, we see a collection of various romantic dialogues with different topics.
۱۵. I am him – Reza Amirkhani
The story of this book is related to the life of a person named Ali Fattah who narrates from his childhood until his death. There are two narrators in the story, one is Reza Amirkhani himself and the other is the protagonist. In this book, an attempt is made to portray Ali’s pure love for a girl named Mahtab, who is a servant of his family.
۱۴. Bamdad Khomar – Fataneh Haj Seyed Javadi
The novel has an Iranian love story that begins with the character of Soodabeh, an educated and wealthy girl who falls in love with a boy who is not close to her in terms of social and economic class. To regret this decision, his mother asks him to talk to Mahboubeh. This novel is the telling of the instructive story of Mahboubeh’s misery in living with her loving Rahim; Narrator of the sad story of the failed love of a girl from the aristocracy of the old period of Tehran to a young carpenter from the lower class of society. - Parichehr – M. مودب پور
An old woman named Parichehr narrates her fiery life. Of course, this novel tells the life story of a boy named Farhad, who returns to Iran after eight years of studying abroad and works in his father’s factory, and many love stories follow. This is the story of several young people who face social, economic and family problems that may occur to many young people.
. Two worlds – street development
This book contains seven interconnected memoirs. The place and time of the stories are Paris and Tehran in the late 1320s to 1988. Although we see different events in each story, but during them we learn how these seven parts are connected. - Symphony of the Dead by Abbas Maroufi, one of the best Iranian novels
This novel is one of the most enduring books of Iranian literature. The protagonist of the Symphony of the Dead is Aydin, who talks about his family and, most importantly, his brother, and tells the reader one by one the story of the death of each member of his family. One of the important points of this book is its unique type of narration. The narrator of the story changes several times and each time the story is told from the point of view of a different person. - I turn off the lights – Zoya Pirzad
This book is written by Clarice. Clarice is an Armenian woman and has 3 children. The author describes Clarice as normal and monotonous to those around her, including her husband, while she always pays more attention to others. The presence of Emile Simonian, a young man who has lost his wife and has a daughter named Emile, exacerbates Clarice’s internal conflicts. - Piano Cafe – Farhad Jafari
The main character is the owner of a cafe, which is a slice of the life of him and his daughter Golgiso. She has failed in her previous job and now lives apart from her husband due to a dispute. In different chapters of the book, he talks about different people and recounts what happens every day.
. This is Azam Hussaini
The word da means mother in Kurdish and Lori, and this book is the narration of the memoirs of Seyedeh Zahra Hosseini, who talks about the Iran-Iraq war, and the author has tried to address the issue of the resistance of Iranian mothers during the Iran-Iraq war. The book consists of three parts. The first part is the early years of Hosseini’s life in Iraq and the family’s forced migration, the second part is a description of Hosseini’s activities during the Iran-Iraq war, and the third part is Hosseini’s personal life and the story of his marriage. - Night harmony of the wood orchestra – Reza Ghasemi
This novel is a postmodern and surreal Iranian novel. The novel is about a forty-year-old man named Yadollah, who lives in the attic of the sixth floor of a building in France, where most of the residents are Iranian. The narrator feels threatened by another Iranian piece of furniture called Proft (ie the Prophet) who claims to have received revelation, as well as Proft’s stabbing of his friend Sayyid Alexander. - Year of the riot – Abbas Maroufi
The book of the year of the riot takes place in seven nights. This book contains memories that are reviewed in the mind of the creator. She is the daughter of a colonel and loves pottery in such a way that it covers her whole being. However, fate has made another decision for Nosha. Of course, this is not the only main character in the story, and there are other main characters. Characters who each perform specific activities based on their own reasons. - I’m probably lost – Sarah Salar
The novel is narrated by a woman who wanders between fantasy and reality during one day. It is a different story from the life of a woman whose greatest concern is her relationship with a girl named Gandum. In this book, the narrator tries to recount the important events of his life, his mental turmoil and memories, and the role of each in his life. - Autumn is the last season of the year – Nasim Marashi
This novel shows excerpts from the lives of three young girls named Shabaneh, Roja and Leila. Girls whose lives have been intertwined since college and now, while their paths are completely separated, are still affecting their lives. This book has two sections entitled Summer and Autumn. In the first part, each of the three characters narrates a few hours of a particular day, and the second part takes place three months later, in which the characters narrate three different non-consecutive days. - Kiss God on the moon – Mustafa Mastoor
A story about what the relationship between man and God is. The main character of this story is Younes, a PhD student in social science research who is researching for a doctoral dissertation and looking for the sociological reason for the suicide of a young man named Pars. The subject of Mohsen Parsa’s suicide and the death of his friend Mehrdad’s wife leave Younes, who previously had stronger religious beliefs, with philosophical ambiguities and questions about the existence of God and the meaning of existence. This book actually tries to raise a philosophical and ontological subject. - Incompleteness – Zahra Abdi
The story of this novel is about two female students in Tehran, one of whom disappears, and her roommate encounters characters and situations in order to find her. In fact, Lian is a strong, self-made southern girl who suddenly disappears one day. His friend and roommate, Solmaz, is a girl who is completely different from Lian and tries to find him by reading Lian’s notes. The book has 23 chapters and two narrators, who narrate almost every chapter by one narrator. - Qeydar – Reza Amirkhani
The main character of the story is a man named Qeydar, whose name is derived from the name of the son of Ishmael, and the whole story is defined around his character. The atmosphere of the story goes back to the fifties and times before the revolution. This book is about an accident that the main character and his wife have while traveling to Isfahan. This novel has 9 chapters, in each chapter we are confronted with a story about Qeydar’s life.
The last word
In this section, we tried to introduce books that are strong in terms of content and, in addition to entertainment, also teach you lessons. We hope you enjoy reading this article and have a good time reading any of the books above . Please share your comments and suggestions with us and the readers of this article.
