Turns out I prescient in picking this up from my TBR pile, as not long after I started reading it, the Mahsa Amini story and related protests propelled Iran into the headlines again. Poets & Pahlevans is Marcello Di Cintio’s travelogue of his journeys through Iran in the early/mid 2000s (post-9/11 but still during the Bush years). He styles himself a romantic, driven by the twin ‘p’s of the title- poetry and wrestling, as well as a fascination with persian language and culture. Di Cintio […]