In his book What is Iran? Domestic Politics and International Relations in Five Musical Pieces, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam sets out to portray a picture of Iran that he hopes appreciates the complexity of Iran more than most depictions hitherto offered. To that end, he employs an aesthetic tool: a “playlist” of five musical pieces. The addition of that non-verbal emotive aspect, which he hopes would better convey the perhaps frustratingly layered nature of the country, is an auspicious innovation, not least because it can appeal not just to the logical but also to the aesthetic instinct of the reader with an interest in Iran and in pursuit of new insights.
