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The Birds of Isfahan: A Novel of Love, Silence, and Freedom Tehran, 1975. A party. A man with raw knuckles and green eyes
Shirin Mohammadi is seventeen, her hair loose in the wind and her whole life ahead of her. Alejandro Herrera García is twenty-seven, with a dust-covered guitar and a secret burning inside him: he fled Spain after the Civil Guard killed his best friend.
What grows between them in the cafes of Tehran has no name in any language. But it beats.
When the Islamic Revolution of 1979 changes everything, Alejandro's company evacuates him. He begs her to come. She cannot abandon her family. They part on a Tehran street with a promise neither knows they can keep: "I'll come back."
What follows are forty-seven years of silence.
Shirin puts on the mandatory hijab in front of a mirror and doesn't recognize herself. She marries a good man she will never love. She survives eight years of war with Iraq listening to bombs fall in a basement while an eighty-year-old neighbor brews tea. She keeps a blue-and-gold silk scarf Alejandro bought her in Isfahan - six embroidered birds with open wings that will never fly - hidden in her bedside drawer.
Alejandro returns to Carmona, Spain. Every night at three in the morning he sits at his mother's kitchen table with a book of Persian poems he cannot read, running his fingers over the words as though touching them means touching her.
In 2022, the name Mahsa Amini shatters the silence of Iranian women. In 2025, Iran erupts. In 2026, during a twenty-day internet blackout, a letter crosses half the world to say what should have been said half a century before.
Alejandro flies to Tehran. They meet again. Seven seconds of silence. The same green eyes. The same smile.
But freedom always has a price. And sometimes that price is the life of the person you love most.
The Birds of Isfahan is a novel about the love that survives revolutions, about the women who resist in silence behind closed doors, and about the birds that, at last, fly free.
For readers who loved The English Patient, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and The House of the Spirits. Note on the situation in Iran
This novel is a work of fiction inspired by real historical events. As these words are written, Iran is experiencing the largest popular uprising since 1979. Thousands have died fighting for their freedom. This novel is dedicated to all Iranian women who dreamed of the wind in their hair and to those who paid with their lives the price of freedom. Author's Note
To all the Shirins of Iran and the world: your pain has not been in vain. Your waiting has not been useless. The birds fly. Birds always fly. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.
Woman, Life, Freedom.
Peace for Iran. Peace for the world.
Peace for the birds that have not yet flown. Pablo Kian March 2026
Shirin Mohammadi is seventeen, her hair loose in the wind and her whole life ahead of her. Alejandro Herrera García is twenty-seven, with a dust-covered guitar and a secret burning inside him: he fled Spain after the Civil Guard killed his best friend.
What grows between them in the cafes of Tehran has no name in any language. But it beats.
When the Islamic Revolution of 1979 changes everything, Alejandro's company evacuates him. He begs her to come. She cannot abandon her family. They part on a Tehran street with a promise neither knows they can keep: "I'll come back."
What follows are forty-seven years of silence.
Shirin puts on the mandatory hijab in front of a mirror and doesn't recognize herself. She marries a good man she will never love. She survives eight years of war with Iraq listening to bombs fall in a basement while an eighty-year-old neighbor brews tea. She keeps a blue-and-gold silk scarf Alejandro bought her in Isfahan - six embroidered birds with open wings that will never fly - hidden in her bedside drawer.
Alejandro returns to Carmona, Spain. Every night at three in the morning he sits at his mother's kitchen table with a book of Persian poems he cannot read, running his fingers over the words as though touching them means touching her.
In 2022, the name Mahsa Amini shatters the silence of Iranian women. In 2025, Iran erupts. In 2026, during a twenty-day internet blackout, a letter crosses half the world to say what should have been said half a century before.
Alejandro flies to Tehran. They meet again. Seven seconds of silence. The same green eyes. The same smile.
But freedom always has a price. And sometimes that price is the life of the person you love most.
The Birds of Isfahan is a novel about the love that survives revolutions, about the women who resist in silence behind closed doors, and about the birds that, at last, fly free.
For readers who loved The English Patient, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and The House of the Spirits. Note on the situation in Iran
This novel is a work of fiction inspired by real historical events. As these words are written, Iran is experiencing the largest popular uprising since 1979. Thousands have died fighting for their freedom. This novel is dedicated to all Iranian women who dreamed of the wind in their hair and to those who paid with their lives the price of freedom. Author's Note
To all the Shirins of Iran and the world: your pain has not been in vain. Your waiting has not been useless. The birds fly. Birds always fly. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.
Woman, Life, Freedom.
Peace for Iran. Peace for the world.
Peace for the birds that have not yet flown. Pablo Kian March 2026
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Author: Kian, Pablo
- ISBN: 9798251416503
- Condition: New
- Dimensions: 8.00 x 0.49
- Number Of Pages: 216
- Publication Year: 2026
Language:
English