They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. It’s up to them to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance, even as God abandons Britain and the fairies and old gods are returning, led by Morgan le Fay. They must reclaim Excalibur and make this ruined world whole again.

But first they’ll have to solve the mystery of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell. The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women who are looking for a way to fight darkness and reforge a broken land

Once the war with Iraq was over and after the death of the new order’s charismatic founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic was consolidated: first by tweaking its institutional arrangements, and then by fostering economic development and post-war reconstruction. A reformist interlude then followed, reversed unceremoniously by a return of populism and a broader authoritarian retrenchment. Today Iran remains at odds with itself, its economy too deeply political to yield meaningful developmental results, its foreign relations too conflicted to allow it a productive place in the community of nations.

As Iran’s nationalities and its women and youth carve out spaces for themselves in the broader narrative, competing identities–religious, national and otherwise–abound. After forty years, the Islamic Republic remains a country in search of itself.