Tehran is now home to a massive book garden by Peter Clark

Generally, theocracies that rank among the world’s worst offenders against freedom of expression aren’t expected to build indoor metropolises brimming with books. Usually they have the reputation of enforcing archaic capital punishment laws, suppressing the rights of women, marauding through the streets to shame cultural non-conformers, or throwing acid in women’s faces (eh hem, Isfahan?).

But as Julia Glum at Newsweek reports, Iran is now home to The Book Garden, a 700,000-square-foot Mecca of theater, academia, and—of course—the censored written word.

It was a long time coming. The idea for the Book Garden was first pitched in 2004 as a way to cater to fans of the [Tehran’s] annual International Book Fair year-round… More than 400,000 titles are available for kids alone. One part of the center even has shorter shelves so youth can reach books better. Iran has censored its literature for years, making publishers submit their books to the government so it can check for inappropriate content before publication. As such, a number of works have been banned, among them Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. In addition, authors have been asked to avoid using terms like kiss, wine, drunk, dog and dance, according to The Guardian.

The structure itself is a marvel. It has enough floor space indoors for fourteen football fields, and rooftop park with over 10,000 square meters of grass and garden. Inside are also ten movie theaters, science halls, a restaurant, a prayer room, and a library.

Golnar Motavelli of Bloomberg News recently visited the facility and sat down with Steve Inskeep at NPR to discuss what this giant facility means for Iran and its reading culture: