When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: is it still the work of the English?

In Iran, there is a famous common saying: “It’s the work of the English” and whilst the UK government resisted backing the US war on Iran at its inception, this nation state has hardly covered itself in glory in the region over many decades.

Growing up in England and looking on at the conflicts that perpetuate in the Middle East has left many of us feeling utterly at a loss about how to understand those conflicts, let alone consider how to contribute to their solutions.  In the last 20+ years alone, those who we thought of as progressive thinkers who could make a significant difference to peace in the region just turned into clones of the same war mongering wolves who continued to wreak havoc.  The UK government’s involvement in the Iraq war spings to mind for example.

So with that context in our minds and with Trump’s more recent insanities (“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…”) how do we respond?  

In early May, we were blessed with an introduction to the author, Ali Asghar Seidabadi through a long standing friend in Sydney, Australia, Trish Amichi, and her colleague Lili Yazdi who has been a long standing colleague with Ali himself.  They were on a quest to have When The Sparrows Grow Anxious printed as soon as possible and we were happily in a position to be able to oblige and support that quest.

NOP was founded with a simple conviction: that small, independent publishers have a responsibility not only to entertain readers, but also to take seriously the stories that might otherwise remain unheard. We publish books that are humane, distinctive, thoughtful and sometimes difficult to categorise. Some are comic, some are reflective, some are deliberately eccentric. But at the heart of every Nick Owen Publishing book is a commitment to voice: to the individual perspective, the lived experience, the marginal note, the private observation, the story written at an angle to the official account.

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious belongs firmly within that tradition.  It records the texture of ordinary life under extraordinary pressure. Through diary fragments, reflections, memories and sharply observed moments, it allows readers to experience what conflict does to time, language, family, friendship, humour, fear and hope.

We are publishing this book because it speaks from a place that is too often spoken about rather than listened to. It offers an intimate account of Tehran during a period of danger and uncertainty, but it also reaches beyond one city and one conflict. It asks what it means to remain human when public events invade private life. It asks how people continue to notice birds, food, jokes, books, neighbours and weather when history presses against the window.

For an independent publisher, this is vital.

Publishing this book also reflects our belief that books can create connections across borders. At a time when public debate is often reduced to slogans, suspicion and noise, When the Sparrows Grow Anxious invites a slower, more attentive form of reading. It asks us to sit with another person in their days, to recognise vulnerability without sentimentality, and to understand that the consequences of war are lived not only in headlines, but in kitchens, streets, silences and small acts of endurance.

We are proud to bring this book to readers.

It is a work of witness, memory and moral imagination. It is also, in its quiet way, an act of trust: trust between writer and reader, between publisher and author, and between people separated by geography but connected by the fragile, stubborn hope that words still matter.

Photo: Attack on a factory in Tehran.  Photo by Mohammad Mahdi Pourarab

To order your copy now or find out more about the work of NOP please feel free to get in touch here!

Email:     nick@nickowenpublishing.co.uk
Website: www.nickowenpublishing.com

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War
Author: Ali Asghar Seidabadi
Publisher: Nick Owen Publishing Ltd
Publication: 15 June 2026
ISBN: 9798197042132
Format: [Hardback / Paperback / Kindle / eBook)
Available from: Nick Owen Publishing / Amazon

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