Book excerpt: ""The Nights of Tehran" is a story that takes place in the 1960s and 1970s, the years that led to the uprisings and tumult that toppled the monarchical regime and ended in the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution and the establishment of a theocracy in Iran. It is a story about the young people in those decades, the story of a generation, Alizadeh's own generation, which she called an idealistic generation of dreamers who believed in patriotism, freedom, justice, culture, and beauty. But it was also a "lost generation." "The Nights of Tehran" is also the story of Iran's capital city itself, albeit a Tehran that is schizophrenic. North Tehran, where much of the story takes place, is an affluent modern city with luxurious homes and gardens, whereas south Tehran, where a significant portion of the novel occurs, is poverty-stricken with dusty, windy, narrow alleyways and old dilapidated houses and flophouses. Alizadeh's Tehran is an imagined city, a construct of the creative mind of the writer. However, many readers who have lived or visited the Iranian capital city at that time will find the same city reflected in this novel"--