Reading List

Authors Like Azadeh Moaveni

Azadeh Moaveni was born in Palo Alto in 1976 to Iranian parents who had left before the revolution, and grew up in Cupertino. After a Fulbright year studying Arabic in Cairo, she moved to Tehran as a reporter for Time, and the result was Lipstick Jihad (2005): a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and then finding herself American in Iran. Honeymoon in Tehran (2009) followed a second stint in the city; with Shirin Ebadi she wrote Ebadi's memoir Iran Awakening (2006). Her reporting for The New York Times on women who had left the Islamic State made her a Pulitzer finalist and became Guest House for Young Widows (2019), shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. Her next book, The East Wing, about America's first ladies and their staffs, is published on 20 October 2026. What readers come to her for is a reporter's access joined to a memoirist's honesty, and a refusal to treat women in the Middle East as either victims or symbols. The writers below share that ground: Iran and its exiles, and women caught up in revolution, war and radicalisation.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Iran and exile · Women in war · Reporting the Middle East · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Azadeh Moaveni, start with Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis for the Iran of Lipstick Jihad. For Guest House for Young Widows, read Åsne Seierstad's Two Sisters, about two Norwegian girls who went to Syria, and Rania Abouzeid on the war they went into. And for exile written as argument, Dina Nayeri.

10 authors like Azadeh Moaveni

01
Tehran, read through books

Azar Nafisi

Iranian-American · Memoirist and essayist

Nafisi taught English literature at the University of Tehran from 1979 and was expelled in 1981 for refusing to wear the veil. From 1995 to 1997 she held a private class at home for women students, reading Nabokov, Fitzgerald and Austen; she left for the United States in 1997, and Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) is the book about that class. It has also been criticised, most sharply by the scholar Hamid Dabashi in 2006, as serving American neoconservative politics, a charge Nafisi has rejected.

The book that defined the Iranian women's memoir in English two years before Lipstick Jihad, and the obvious next read. Nafisi writes from the generation that lived through the revolution as adults; Moaveni writes from the one that came back to see what it had left. Moaveni is the reporter, Nafisi the literature teacher, and the two books show the same city from either side of that line.

— Lisanne
Every book by Azar Nafisi →
02
The revolution, drawn

Marjane Satrapi

French-Iranian · b. 1969 · Graphic novelist

Satrapi was born in Rasht in 1969, grew up in Tehran and moved to France in 1994. Persepolis, her graphic memoir of childhood during the revolution and the Iran–Iraq war and of her teenage years in Vienna, came out in four volumes from L'Association between 2000 and 2003. The film she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud shared the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007. She died in June 2026, aged 56.

The same double life as Lipstick Jihad — too Iranian in Europe, too Western at home — told in black-and-white panels. Satrapi left as a girl and Moaveni grew up abroad, but both write about the self you have to perform in each country, and both are funnier about it than the subject suggests.

— Lisanne
Every book by Marjane Satrapi →
03
The memoir Moaveni co-wrote

Shirin Ebadi

Iranian · b. 1947 · Lawyer and memoirist

Ebadi was one of Iran's first women judges before the revolution, was removed from the bench after it, and became a human rights lawyer defending women, children and dissidents. In 2003 she won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first Iranian to do so. Iran Awakening (2006), written with Azadeh Moaveni, is her account of that life; she has lived outside Iran since 2009.

The book Moaveni helped make, and the best way to see Iranian women's politics from the inside of the system rather than its edges. Where Lipstick Jihad is about a generation's private rebellions, Ebadi's story is about arguing for the same freedoms in court, under Iranian law, at real personal risk.

— Lisanne
04
Exile, argued

Dina Nayeri

Iranian-American · b. 1979 · Essayist and novelist

Nayeri was born in Isfahan and left Iran in 1988, aged about eight, with her mother and brother after her mother, a convert to Christianity, was threatened by the authorities; after two years as asylum seekers in Dubai and Rome the family settled in Oklahoma. The Ungrateful Refugee (2019) mixes that story with the stories of refugees she met in camps in Europe and won the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2020.

The diaspora half of Moaveni's subject, taken further. Both write about what Iranians abroad are expected to feel — gratitude, nostalgia, a tidy story — and both refuse it. Nayeri is angrier and more essayistic, and Who Gets Believed? turns the question onto how institutions decide whose account is true.

— Lisanne
05
Closest to Guest House for Young Widows

Åsne Seierstad

Norwegian · b. 1970 · Reporter

Seierstad reported from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and lived with a Kabul bookseller's family for The Bookseller of Kabul (2002). In 2010 an Oslo court ordered her to pay damages to the bookseller's wife over the book; Seierstad won on appeal. Two Sisters (2018 in English) follows two Somali-Norwegian teenagers, Ayan and Leila Juma, who left Oslo for Syria in 2013, and their father's attempts to bring them home.

The nearest book to Guest House for Young Widows on any shelf: young European Muslim women joining the Islamic State, reconstructed from messages, family accounts and long interviews. Seierstad stays with one family and lets the father carry the story; Moaveni follows a group of women and is more interested in the politics that pushed them. Read together they answer each other.

— Lisanne

Every book by Åsne Seierstad →

06
The Syria they travelled to

Rania Abouzeid

Lebanese-Australian · Reporter

Abouzeid reported from inside Syria for more than five years, often in secret. No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (2018) follows four young Syrians through the uprising, Assad's prisons and the rise of the Islamic State. It won the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize.

The war that the women in Guest House for Young Widows walked into, told from the side of the Syrians who already lived there. Abouzeid shares Moaveni's method — a handful of people followed for years, their choices explained rather than judged — and her book is the context that makes Moaveni's make sense.

— Lisanne

Every book by Rania Abouzeid →

07
Women and war, reported

Christina Lamb

British · b. 1965 · Reporter

Lamb is chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times and has reported on Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than thirty years. She co-wrote I Am Malala (2013) with Malala Yousafzai. Our Bodies, Their Battlefield (2020), on rape as a weapon of war from Bosnia to Iraq, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Orwell Prize and won the Witold Pilecki International Book Award.

The closest match to Moaveni's later work, which moved from Iran to conflict-related sexual violence at the International Crisis Group. Both are foreign correspondents who made women the centre of the war story rather than its footnote, and both co-wrote a famous woman's memoir. Lamb is the more traditional reporter; Moaveni brings more of herself.

— Lisanne

Every book by Christina Lamb →

08
Iran and Saudi Arabia since 1979

Kim Ghattas

Lebanese · Reporter

Ghattas was born and raised in Beirut during the civil war, reported across the Middle East for the BBC and covered the State Department from 2008 to 2013, travelling with Hillary Clinton. Black Wave (2020), a New York Times Notable Book, traces the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran from 1979 and what it did to the region's culture and politics.

The history behind both of Moaveni's subjects. Lipstick Jihad lives with the aftermath of 1979 in Tehran; Guest House for Young Widows ends in the sectarian wars that Ghattas traces back to the same year. Ghattas writes the big picture through individual lives, which makes her a natural follow-on for Moaveni's readers.

— Lisanne
09
How radicalisation happens

Lawrence Wright

American · b. 1947 · Reporter · Pulitzer 2007

Wright taught English at the American University in Cairo in his twenties and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. The Looming Tower (2006), built from five years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, traces al-Qaeda from the 1940s to 11 September 2001 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2007.

The male, earlier half of the story Guest House for Young Widows tells: how ordinary people come to join a jihadist movement. Wright follows the men who built al-Qaeda; Moaveni follows the women drawn to its successor. Both refuse the easy explanation and look at the grievances and the politics first.

— Lisanne

Every book by Lawrence Wright →

10
The war from the other side

Anand Gopal

American · Reporter

Gopal reported from Afghanistan for The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor. No Good Men Among the Living (2014) follows a Taliban commander, a warlord and a village woman through the American war; it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and won the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2015.

Moaveni's argument in Guest House for Young Widows is that Western policy helped produce the people it then called enemies; Gopal makes the same argument about Afghanistan, from close up and with the same patience. His village woman is the kind of figure Moaveni's books are built around.

— Lisanne

Every book by Anand Gopal →

Where to start if you loved Azadeh Moaveni

If you want Lipstick Jihad again, read Azar Nafisi.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: the same city, a generation earlier, through books.

If you want it in pictures, read Marjane Satrapi.

Persepolis — the revolution and the exile, in four volumes.

If you want Guest House for Young Widows, read Åsne Seierstad.

Two Sisters: two Norwegian teenagers, Syria, and the father who follows them.

If you want the argument about exile, read Dina Nayeri.

The Ungrateful Refugee — what refugees owe, and what they do not.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Azadeh Moaveni

Who should I read if I love Azadeh Moaveni?

For her Iran memoirs, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee. For her reporting on women and the Islamic State, Åsne Seierstad's Two Sisters, Rania Abouzeid's No Turning Back and Christina Lamb's Our Bodies, Their Battlefield. Shirin Ebadi's Iran Awakening is the memoir Moaveni co-wrote.

What books are like Lipstick Jihad?

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis are the closest: Iranian women writing about the years after the revolution, at home and abroad. Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee (2019) covers the diaspora side. Moaveni's own sequel is Honeymoon in Tehran (2009).

What books are like Guest House for Young Widows?

Åsne Seierstad's Two Sisters (2018), about two Somali-Norwegian sisters who left Oslo for Syria in 2013, is the nearest. Rania Abouzeid's No Turning Back (2018) tells the Syrian war from the side of those who lived there, and Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower (2006) is the standard account of how al-Qaeda grew.

What is Azadeh Moaveni's new book?

The East Wing: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America's First Ladies, published by St. Martin's Press on 20 October 2026. It covers first ladies and their staffs from Eleanor Roosevelt to Melania Trump. It is a change of subject from her earlier books on Iran and on women and conflict.

Did Azadeh Moaveni write Iran Awakening?

Yes, with Shirin Ebadi. Iran Awakening (2006) is Ebadi's memoir of her life as a judge, then a human rights lawyer in Iran, and of winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Moaveni is credited as co-author.

Is Lipstick Jihad a memoir?

Yes. Lipstick Jihad (2005) is Moaveni's memoir of growing up Iranian-American in California and of the years she then spent in Tehran as a reporter for Time. Honeymoon in Tehran (2009) continues the story through a second period in Iran.

Footnotes

  1. Azadeh Moaveni — Wikipedia
  2. Bio — Azadeh Moaveni
  3. The East Wing — Kirkus Reviews
  4. Azar Nafisi — Wikipedia
  5. Marjane Satrapi, autrice de Persepolis, est morte — ActuaLitté
  6. Dina Nayeri — Wikipedia
  7. Åsne Seierstad — Wikipedia
  8. Christina Lamb — Wikipedia

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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