Nairi Nahapetian was born into an Armenian family in Tehran. A journalist, she is also the author of several novels, for adults and children, including “Who killed Ayatollah Kanuni? (Liana Levi editions, 2009), one of the first Iranian thrillers published in the world. Stéphanie Perez has been a major reporter for France Télévisions for over twenty-five years. She has been to Iran several times and has covered several conflicts, such as recently in Ukraine. “The Guardian of Tehran” is his first novel.
” Naïri Nahapétian saw his life change dramatically at the age of 9, during the Islamic revolution in Iran. She leaves Tehran for Paris with her mother, thinking of returning a few weeks later. But the exile lasts. And his father does not join them. Years later, after a deep depression, Naïri embarks on a family investigation to understand what prevented her father from settling in Paris with them.
From the chic avenues of the 15th arrondissement to the congested streets of Tehran, Naïri retraces the thread of her childhood memories in Iran, her integration into France in the 1980s and her experiences as a young woman. While seeking to solve the enigma of the prohibition imposed on her father to leave Iran, she leads a reflection on the wearing of the veil and on the place of women in Iranian and French society. She also provides an analysis of contemporary political life in Iran, of which she is a recognized expert as a journalist.
Through his life journey, we discover Iran and what the Islamic revolution meant in particular for the Armenian minority from which Naïri comes. We also understand how much a family history can be marked with the seal of the political history of a country. » (Presentation of Bayard editions)
” The story of Tehran’s museum keeper, a lonely man facing the threat of religious fanatics who managed to save 300 masterpieces of modern art, the treasure of the Empress of Arts.
Spring 1979, Tehran. While the Islamic Revolution puts the streets of the Iranian capital on fire and blood, the Mullahs burn everything that represents the Western model praised by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah, now in exile.
Alone in the basement of the Museum of Modern Art in Tehran, its guardian Cyrus Farzadi trembles for his paintings. Amid the chaos, he recounts the splendor and decadence of his country through the incredible fate of his museum, the favorite of Farah Diba, the Empress of the Arts. Nearly 300 paintings by masters had enabled Iranians to discover the impressionist masterpieces of Monet, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the cubism of Picasso or the abstract art of Jackson Pollock.
But what will become of these jewels that the religious deem anti-Islamic? Faced with obscurantism, Cyrus dons, at barely 25 years old, the somewhat large clothes of guardian of a treasure to be protected against ignorance and Islamic morality. » (Presentation of Plon editions)