WE ARE IRAN
by Nasrin Alavi
Portobello Books £12.99, 365 pages

The discrepancy between Iran’s image in the west and the reality of the country is so great that after every visit to Iran, I am shocked on returning to London to see archive footage of protesters burning the US flag and chanting women veiled in voluminous black chadors. The reality that I see in Iran is so far from this - and the issues that the Iranian populace struggle with daily are so much more complex than these simplistic images - that I often feel defeated by the difficulty of trying to fill in the gaps for my friends in the west.