Iranian Bookstores

Persian bookshops in Germany: a small number of owner-run places carrying what no chain here keeps on a shelf. Literature and poetry in Persian, translations into Persian, children's books, dictionaries and grammars, and titles from publishers outside Iran that never enter a German catalogue. Buying a book is nobody's emergency, which is exactly why it pays to plan the trip: these shops are few, their hours are their own, and what you want often has to be ordered rather than picked up.

What the Verified badge does and does not say

Verified says one thing only: a real person stands behind this profile and manages it themselves. YabInfy does not check anyone's certificates, licences, experience or competence, and the badge is not for sale.

This list is flat, so the asking is on you

There are no sub-categories here and no Specialty filter, because there is nothing to put in one. Every place sits in one list, and what separates them is invisible from the outside: one shop is built around literature and poetry, another around children's books and language material, a third is really a publisher that also sells over the counter. So the question that saves a wasted afternoon is the plainest one there is: do you have this, and if not, can you get it.

A bookshop, and usually something else as well

Persian bookshops in the diaspora rarely live on books alone. Depending on the place, the same address can also be a publisher, a café, a small gallery, or the room where a reading happens on a Friday evening, which makes a shop like this the fastest way to hear what is going on in Persian in your city. Where one posts its events here, Follow puts its Announcements in your inbox.

Getting hold of one particular title

• Fixed prices, but only for German books. A book published in Germany carries a retail price set by law (Buchpreisbindung), so the identical German edition costs the same in a one-room shop as at a chain or online. Persian books imported from Iran or printed abroad fall outside that rule, so their prices genuinely differ, and asking what one costs is neither rude nor pointless.
• Ordering is not the same job. Any bookshop in Germany can order any German-published title through the wholesalers, usually for the next working day. A Persian title has no such pipeline: it reaches you only if the shop has its own import route, stock in a back room, or a working relationship with a publisher abroad. Building those is the whole reason this category exists.
• Out of print often means not printed right now. Many Persian publishers abroad work in very small runs or print to order, so a title that looks unobtainable is frequently one email away. Ask the shop to check with the publisher before you give up on a book.
• If you import it yourself, customs decides. Order from Iran or have a parcel sent and it is the customs office, not the seller, that sets what the parcel owes. Books are taxed at the reduced rate rather than the standard one, but a shipment can still attract import tax and a handling fee, and thresholds and paperwork change. A shop that imports regularly has absorbed that work already, and once you count your own time it is often cheaper.

Which edition, and who translated it

For a translated book the translator matters more than the cover: two Persian translations of one novel can read like two different novels, and a good translator is the reason a whole generation read a difficult writer at all. Ask for the translator and the publisher, not only the title, and if you are replacing a book you loved, bring a photograph of its title page. The same care applies to Persian originals, because the text of a book printed inside Iran and the text of the same book published abroad are not always identical. A shop that carries both can tell you which one you are holding, so say it matters before you pay.

Persian for a child growing up in German

Children raised here usually learn to speak Persian at the kitchen table and never learn to read it, and by school age the gap is wide. What helps is rarely the book that worked for you.

• Alphabet and handwriting workbooks written for a beginner reader, not for a five-year-old who hears Persian all day outside the house.
• Graded readers short enough that the child finishes one. Finishing is the whole point.
• Facing-page editions, or Persian versions of stories the child already knows in German, so reading is decoding rather than guessing.
• Ask what reading level a book is genuinely for. A title sold for age eight is often two years too hard for an eight-year-old here, and nothing puts a child off faster. Some shops keep the workbooks used by weekend Persian schools, which are built for this.

The language shelf

For German, a grammar explained in Persian tells you why a rule exists and a German one stops you translating in your head, so most people end up wanting both. Course books and exam preparation are German-published, so the price is fixed and the only question is which suits how you study. A dictionary is worth handling before you buy: check whether it gives example sentences or only word lists, and whether the Persian carries short vowels where you need them.

Before you cross town

Opening hours decide more here than in any professional category, because you are going to a place rather than booking an appointment. Shops in Germany do not open on Sundays and small ones often close early on Saturday, with the detail set by each Bundesland, and a one-person shop also shuts for a book fair without warning. Read Opening hours and Open now on the profile, use Open in maps to see how far it really is, then phone first: hours on a page are only as current as the last time the owner updated them. Distance need not decide it either, since many of these shops will post a book within Germany or take an order by phone.

What to ask before you go

• Whether the title is in stock, and if not, whether they can order it and roughly how long that takes.
• What an imported Persian book costs, since that price is not fixed by law.
• Which translation and which publisher they carry, when the book is a translation.
• Whether they post within Germany, and what postage comes to.
• Which reading level a children's book is really aimed at.
• Whether they hold readings or events, and how you hear about the next one.
• YabInfy checks none of this, so ask for it yourself, and ask to see the document where it matters.

Choosing from this list

A review here is useful for what a customer can honestly judge: whether the shop had what they came for, whether an ordered book arrived and when, whether the owner knew the field well enough to recommend something. It is not a verdict on a book, and a shop is not answerable for a text somebody else wrote. Contact details sit behind Show contact details & address and reach the shop directly.

Privacy runs both ways here. YabInfy does not show who looked at a page or who got in touch, so browsing leaves nothing for anyone to see. The one thing that becomes public is a review you choose to write, under a name you pick yourself.

By city: Berlin, Köln, Bochum and München. If you are learning the language rather than reading about it, see German language teacher and Tutors & instructors; for a certified translation of a document rather than a book, Translators; and for somewhere to sit down with what you just bought, Cafés. There is more about how this site works in the FAQ, and if you run a bookshop, add your business.