When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War

Description

A diary of war, culture and human endurance

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War offers an intimate, humane and urgent record of ordinary life under bombardment.

Written by Ali Asghar Seidabadi, an acclaimed Iranian researcher, author and cultural figure, this extraordinary diary-style work gives readers a rare, immediate and deeply human account of life in Tehran during war, bombardment and internet disruption.

Originally written as daily notes for international friends and literary colleagues, the book records not only fear, uncertainty and danger, but also the fragile continuities of everyday life: taped windows, family calls, cafés, bookshops, food, birds, interrupted communications and the small rituals by which people continue to live while history presses against the glass.

This is not a conventional political book. Nor is it a detached analysis of war. It is a work of witness: intimate, precise, restrained and morally alert. At its heart is a voice committed to a “middle path”: nonviolent, humane, neither propagandist nor self-pitying.

In a world often divided by slogans, suspicion and noise, When the Sparrows Grow Anxious insists on the importance of listening to an individual human being trying to describe what it feels like to endure.

A different view of Iran

The title’s image of anxious sparrows captures the emotional force of the book: small lives continuing amid forces far larger than themselves. Through that recurring motif, Seidabadi turns the daily experience of conflict into something both specific and universal.

The diary is rooted in Tehran, but its reach is international. As a writer and editor with deep connections across global children’s and young adult literature, Seidabadi writes from within a network of friendships, correspondence and cultural solidarity.What emerges is a record of war seen not through military strategy or state rhetoric, but through culture, family, memory and daily survival.

Readers encounter a city under pressure, but also a mind refusing to surrender its clarity. The result is a book that speaks powerfully to anyone interested in contemporary history, human rights, international literature, peace, cultural memory and the moral role of writing in times of crisis.

Why this book matters

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious offers something urgently needed: a human-scale account of war from inside the experience itself.

The book explores the cultural infrastructure of Iran through diary notes that reveal a different Iran from the one often seen in news reports and media narratives: an Iran in which ancient myths still remain active, where victory and defeat carry different meanings, and where people continue searching for small fragments of life amid the devastation of war.

At a time when international events are often reduced to breaking-news fragments, partisan interpretation or distant commentary, this book asks readers to slow down and pay attention.

It is a book about conflict, but also about friendship. It is about fear, but also about humour, culture and endurance. It is about Tehran, but also about the shared vulnerability of human beings everywhere.

About the author

Ali Asghar Seidabadi is an Iranian researcher, author and well-known cultural figure. His newspaper columns and books for both adults and children are widely read, and he is regularly invited to speak at events and institutions. He also frequently gives interviews to non-governmental media outlets.

Recent books include two research-based works: From the Historical Mossadegh to the Mythical Mossadegh, a phenomenological study of Mossadegh’s hundred-year presence in the Iranian public imagination, and Living with the Philosophy of Clowns: Reflections on the Epistemological Transformation of Iranian Teenagers, an analysis of the Mahsa movement and the values and attitudes of Iran’s “Generation Z”.

In When the Sparrows Grow Anxious, Seidabadi brings that literary sensibility to bear on lived experience. The book is observant, humane and disciplined. It is marked by attention to small details, an instinct for connection and an unwavering commitment to nonviolence.

This is a diary by someone who understands the importance of stories: not as escape, but as a way of preserving human dignity when the surrounding world becomes frighteningly unstable.

Publisher’s note

“At a time when the President of the USA can assert, ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…’, Ali Asghar Seidabadi has written a book of huge courage. These diary notes attend to the human texture of war: to windows, birds, phone calls, friendships, children’s books, and the stubborn persistence of ordinary life. That is precisely why the book matters and why we are honoured to bring his work to a wider, global public.”

Nick Owen MBE
Founder, Nick Owen Publishing

For readers who care about…

This book will appeal to readers interested in contemporary history, international affairs, Iranian culture, literature, human rights, peace, nonviolence, diaries, memoirs, literary witness and the moral role of writing in times of crisis.

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is a significant new work for readers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians and reading groups seeking writing that is timely, humane and morally serious.