feeLit 2026: Shida Bazyar – Nachts ist es leise in Teheran

In the organizer's words:

From July 2 to 5, feeLit - International Literature Festival Heidelberg and its authors will be making a guest appearance at halle02 for the second time. Our festival venue is all about books and writing. This year, feeLit presents national and international literary stars and brings authors together with their audience.

feeLit 2026: Shida Bazyar - It's quiet in Tehran at night

Language: German

Four voices. Four decades. A family between Tehran and Germany. Shida Bazyar's debut novel "Nachts ist es leise in Teheran", whose English translation was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2026, is a moving generational novel of unbroken urgency. In a dense family mosaic, Bazyar tells of revolution, flight, resistance and the unconditional desire for freedom.

Shida Bazyar, born in Hermeskeil in 1988, studied literary writing in Hildesheim and worked in youth education for many years. Her debut novel "Nachts ist es leise in Teheran" (2016) has been translated and awarded several times, including the Ulla Hahn Authors' Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize and a nomination for the International Booker Prize. "Drei Kameradinnen" followed in 2021 and was longlisted for the German Book Prize. In 2023, her work was honored with the Ernst Toller Prize.

"It's good that Shida Bazyar, certainly one of the great young authors, thinks so politically. And it's at least as good that you don't even have to give her credit for it in order to appreciate the literary bravura with which she draws us into a narrated and yet-to-be-narrated world in quiet and loud, rebellious, but often poetically subtle, serene sentences that give us hope and confidence, a world that reaches much further than our lives or her own." taz

Good to know

• Only cashless payment (EC card, credit card, contactless) is possible at our venue: halle02.de/cashless
• Seated event, free choice of seats
• Local organizer: FeeLit - International Literature Festival Heidelberg
• Secure resale of tickets only via our partner TicketSwap: halle02.de/ticketswap