The Lights Never Fully Go Out; Yesterday’s Letters is a collection structured around letters by Abbas Shokri. This book is forthcoming by Asemana Books on Decemeber 18, 2026.
Language: Persian
ISBN: 9781997503675
Through its thoughtful division into two distinct historical periods, the book becomes a work that documents both emotional memory and social history.
The first ten letters were sent to Shokri in Iran by his contemporaries during his university years. The second group of ten letters was written by his students or former students after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. A crucial distinction, however, is that all but one of the letters in the second group were sent from within Iran; only one was written from abroad, in exile. A careful reading must therefore distinguish between the time and place in which the letters were written and the place where they were received. Although the letters from the second period were received while Shokri was in exile, they predominantly speak from within Iran. It is precisely this relationship between inside and outside—between Iran and exile—that shapes an important layer of the book’s meaning.
Equally significant is the “Anonymous Letter from Shiraz,” a philosophical and romantic letter that properly belongs to the first period. It reached Shokri at university before the Revolution. Its philosophical and romantic sensibility—which might mistakenly be read as a product of the post-revolutionary experience—actually emerged from the intellectual and emotional atmosphere of university life before that historic rupture.
