‘Freedom implies discoverable meaning in an act.’
– Frederick Turner
Shiva Rahbaran is a writer and researcher interested in the relation between freedom and art. She has explored this topic in a variety of different contexts ranging from contemporary English novel to post-revolutionary Iranian cinema and literature. She has published several books and articles on this topic.
Her latest book Iranian Cinema Uncensored was praised by the leading cultural critic Hamid Dabashi as ‘a beautiful read and full of joyous insights’.
Shiva Rahbaran is also a fiction writer. Her short story ‘Massoumeh’ won the 2016 Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Her novel My Name is Innocence will be published by Humanitas in 2025. Currently she is working on a novel about love and friendship during events that led to the Islamic revolution in Iran.
My Literary Agent
Peter Frasers + Dunlop
Lisette Verhagen
lverhagen@pfd.co.uk
Latest Books



Latest Articles
Iranian Cinema and Women’s Representation
In her latest article on women’s representation in Iranian Cinema, Shiva Rahbaran discusses how women’s visibility, modernity and cinema fed and were in turn fed by state-led policies during the Pahlavi era and how, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic...
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – ‘Kommt Und Tötet Mich!’
In dieser Artikel zeigt Shiva Rahbaran wie Die Ermordung des iranischen Filmregisseurs Dariush Mehrjui eine Fortsetzung der Kettenmorde der Neunzigerjahre an der Intellektuelle und Künstler in Iran ist und bezeugt, dass die anti-moderne Nature des Regimes trotz allen...
‘Come and Kill Me!’: Killing Mehrjui and the Repeat of 1990s Chain-Murders
In this article, Shiva Rahbaran argues that the murder of the Iranian film director Dariush Mehrjui is a continuation of the serial assassination (also called chain-murders) of intellectuals and artists in the 1990s Iran. She believes that this murder is yet another...


