As a literary journalist in Iran, I have often wondered why the country’s greed for literature abruptly ended when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.There was a time when great Persian poets such as Hafez, Rumi or Khayyam were present in people’s daily lives, permeating their speech even in the very rural regions, but now books scarcely figure in a country once recognised by its literature. Today, you are unlikely to see signs of literary life in Iran. Writers face immense challenges in getting their works read. Crackdowns imposed by Ahmadinejad’s government have plunged publishing into crisis.

‘They [the governmental authorities] have not only made the publishers stop working, but also have put writers in a situation in which they have no inclination to write,’ says Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, author of the Persian 10-volume bestseller Kelydar, who refuses to give his next book to a publisher as a protest against the government’s clampdown.