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  • The Fall of Heaven

  • The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran
  • Written by: Andrew Scott Cooper
  • Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
  • Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (27 ratings)

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The Fall of Heaven cover art

The Fall of Heaven

Written by: Andrew Scott Cooper
Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
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Publisher's Summary

An immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late shah's widow, Empress Farah.

In this remarkably human portrait of one of the 20th century's most complicated personalities, author Andrew Scott Cooper traces Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. He highlights the turbulence of the postwar era, during which the shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers. Listeners get the story of the shah's political career alongside the story of his courtship and marriage to Farah Diba, who became a power in her own right; the story of the beloved family they created; and an exclusive look at life inside the palace during the Iranian Revolution.

Cooper's investigative account ultimately delivers the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty through the eyes of those who were there: leading Iranian revolutionaries; President Jimmy Carter and White House officials; US Ambassador William Sullivan and his staff in the American embassy in Tehran; American families caught up in the drama; and even Empress Farah herself, along with the rest of the Iranian imperial family.

At once intimate and sweeping, The Fall of Heaven recreates in stunning detail the dramatic and final days of one of the world's most legendary ruling families, the unseating of which helped set the stage for the current state of the Middle East.

©2016 Andrew Scott Cooper (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

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What listeners say about The Fall of Heaven

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  • Overall
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An Eye Opener

The Book
The book nicely connects dots of this Iranian contemporary history. The chronological events make realistic sense.
The Fall of Pahlavi bears lots of Myths and conspiracy theories in mind of Iranian, most of them do not add up. But this well written collection of events shows how circumstances led to the fall of Iran which shook the world.
The Narrator
He made an effort to mimic all different accents which gave life to the whole narration. Most of the names pronounced correctly except few which an Iranian speaker can get used to it quickly.
Recommendation
I recommend this book to all who what to know the actual contemporary history of Iran clear of all misconceptions.

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The book I was looking for

A must read for ALL Iranians and anyone curious. This book provides the perfect amount of historical and social context for the political events that led to the islamic revolution in Iran. It is impossible to truly make sense of what’s happening in Iran and Middle East today without reading this book.

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An excellent tale of Pahlavi dynasty

Very enlightening, a good perspective of what happened and why it happened. Highly recommended to folks that are interested to know about Iran and its revolution.

Narration wasn't very good though.

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Republic

A 🤔 Republic.... A Con.... Religious Fanatics.... Education and wealth of oil.....crumpled.... religion and state

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible performance by the Narrator

The narrator used a condescending accent to mimic Iranian characters. This was annoying, disrespectful and hard to listen to an otherwise great book! Audible should be more mindful of these details.

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Extraordinary Listening Adventure

For me who was born and raised in Islamic Republic and was forbidden to know about Shah this audiobook was an eye opener. Even-though the narrator has to work on his Farsi accent he did a great job making the story more interesting. This is a must read/listen to all Iranians specially the ones who were born after 1977!

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Extraordinarily bad narration.

It is a great book but the narration was extremely bad. All the names' pronunciations especially the Persian names were horrific. It was a torture to listen to the narrator's voice.
I have no idea based on what this narrator was selected. The worst book narration I have ever heard. Extremely bad bad bad bad!!

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Very poor performance

The performance was horrible. The narrator did absolutely no research; inventing accents for people who spoke English fluently without any accent. Butchered names by trying to mimic accents that were out of context and inaccurate. Completely detracted from the story... it was a pain to get through the dialogues in the book because of his "performance"...

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