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 a well-known cultural figure, this extraordinary diary-style work offers readers a rare, immediate and deeply human account of life in Tehran during war, bombardment and internet disruption.
Written originally 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 Sparrows Become Anxious insists on the importance of listening to an individual human being trying to describe what it feels like to endure.
A diary of war, culture and human endurance
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. His messages to writers, illustrators and book people beyond Iran become part of the book’s emotional architecture.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.
About the author
Ali Asghar Seidabadi is an Iranian researcher, author, and a 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 various events and institutions and he frequently give 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.
For more information visit http://nevisak.ir/en/سیدآبادی-علی%E2%80%8Cاصغر/
Publisher Nick Owen MBE, founder of Nick Owen Publishing, said:
“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.”
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is an important and timely publication because it offers something urgently needed: a human-scale account of war from inside the experience itself. It explores the cultural infrastructure of Iran through these diary notes, sometimes prompted by remarks made by President Trump. It shows that some forms of Iranian behaviour and social response, which may appear strange or incomprehensible to President Trump and to many people around the world, have deep mythological roots.
In this book, we encounter a different Iran from the one usually 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 the small fragments of life amid the devastation of war.
At a time when international events can be 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.
For readers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians and reading groups looking for books that combine contemporary relevance with literary and moral seriousness, When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is a significant new work.
Pre-publication interest now invited
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious will be published on 8 June 2026 and we are now inviting interest from reviewers, journalists, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, cultural commentators, international literature networks, human rights organisations, peace organisations and reading groups ahead of publication.
Advance review copies, author information and interview opportunities with the publisher are available on request.
For review copies, interview requests or further information, please contact:
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: June 2026
ISBN: 9798197042132
Format: [Hardback / Paperback / Kindle / eBook)
Available from: Nick Owen Publishing website / Amazon