Revolution Street

Fattah is middle-aged and unmarried. A former hospital janitor who became rich working as a torturer in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, he now moonlights as an uncertified backstreet doctor specializing in ‘honour surgery’ for unmarried young women. Fattah has nothing but contempt for these women; that is until the beautiful Shahrzad lands on his operating table, and soon he is dangerously infatuated.

Undeterred that she is promised to – and in love with – another man, the younger and less affluent Mostafa, Fattah sets out to win Shahrzad by any means. Robbed of his bride, the jilted and furious Mostafa launches a desperate plan to move her beyond his rival’s reach by falsely reporting her as an opponent of the regime, a mission that takes him deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs.

In Amir Cheheltan’s critically acclaimed and searing novel – his first to be translated into English – power and corruption in post-revolutionary Iran are exposed through the actions of two men who work to exploit the chaos and confusion for their own benefit. The result is a provocative tale of a divided society where religious devotion and cruelty often go hand in hand.