February 17, 2023
Iradj Bagherzade, founder of the IB Tauris publishing house of books on Middle East politics and history, passed away at his home in London on January 8. He was 80. Born in Vienna and educated at Oxford University, Bagherzade began his publishing career at Time-Life Books. He worked for the company in New York, Amsterdam, London and finally Tehran, where he was tasked with starting a local publishing venture. The mission was cut short by the revolution, and, in 1980, Bagherzade and his future wife, Shahnaz, left Iran. They married the following year, and settled in London.
In 1983, he established IB Tauris in London, initially working out of a single-room office. The room had previously served as a location for the filming of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1972 thriller “Frenzy, specifically, the sinister scene in which actor Barry Foster strangles two women.
IB Tauris went on to become a world leader in Middle Eastern studies, publishing more than 200 books a year, many of which would otherwise never have seen the light of day. In 2018, IB Tauris was sold to Bloomsbury, publishers of the Harry Potter books. At the time of the purchase, IB Tauris had 4,000 titles in its catalogue.
One notable volume was the diary of Asadollah Amini, Iran’s one-time prime minister and court minister, which was translated from Persian and titled, “The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969-1977.” The book offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the imperial court during the final decade of the Shah’s reign.
Another major release was “Taliban” by Ahmed Rashid, a definitive history of the Taliban, which IB Tauris published in 2000 – a year before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Following the invasion and the Taliban’s defeat, the book became a global bestseller, and is now a key reference book.
Bagherzade’s focus as a publisher extended well beyond the Middle East, international affairs and global politics. He had a keen interest in culture, as reflected in IB Tauris’s highly eclectic non-fiction list, with whole sections dedicated to topics such as film studies, world cinema, visual arts, classics and religion.
In a column for the trade publication BookBrunch, Bagherzade recalled how, when he first founded IB Tauris, the name drew perplexity. People would ask: “‘IB Tauris how do you spell that? Are you something to do with bulls? Or astrology?’”
“So, who are we?” Bagherzade wrote in the column. “If we were being immodest, we’d say we are the only major university press without a university.”
“But if you don’t like that conceit, then we’re one of the plucky bunch of English-language independents who, in Britain and America, have flourished while the bigger competition has been doing its corporate thing,” he wrote. He is survived by his wife Shahnaz and their children, Tara and Nezam.
