Shiva is an Iranian writer and culture researcher. She was eight years old when the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into exile and thirteen when she left Iran with her family for Germany. She studied literature and political science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf before continuing her academic work at the University of Oxford, where she completed her DPhil in English literature.

Her early research focused on the British novelist Nicholas Mosley, whose work opened a lifelong interest in literature as a space for freedom, moral inquiry, and political imagination. This research led to The Paradox of Freedom: a study of Mosley’s life and writings, followed by Nicholas Mosley’s Life and Art: a biography in six interviews.

Shiva later turned her attention to contemporary Iranian culture and the role of literature in a revolutionised society shaped by censorship, ideological pressure, and political violence. In Iranian Writers Uncensored, she explored how Iranian writers confront questions of freedom and democracy through examining the relation of the state and society to written word. Her interest in artistic resistance also extended to film, resulting in Iranian Cinema Uncensored, a study of the workings of contemporary Iranian filmmakers since the Islamic Revolution.

Alongside her academic and critical work, Shiva gradually began writing fiction. Her short story “Massoumeh: An Iranian Family in Times of Revolution” won the 2016 Wasafiri New Writing Prize. The themes first explored there – revolution, exile, radicalisation, family memory, anger, loss, and survival – became central to her debut novel, My Name Is Innocence, published by Humanitas Fiction in 2026.

Shiva has also written for and contributed to international media, including BBC Persian, BBC World Service, and Iran International. After living in Germany and later London, she continues to work across literary criticism, cultural commentary, and fiction. She is currently working on her second novel, set in Europe and Iran, which further explores memory, exile, and the Iranian diaspora.

Main areas of interest

Nicholas Mosley | Experimental English Novel | Iranian Diaspora |
Contemporary Iranian Literature | Contemporary Iranian Cinema |