Cheetah [Book & Screenplay]

When I first heard about the Asiatic cheetah, I was on my first trip into remote Iran. Something in the intense concern of my guides and the eerie otherness of the desert, stirred me so deeply that I knew I had to write about it...

The Asiatic cheetah on the brink of extinction, roams its last home, the remote Iranian desert. Here you will meet the unsung heroes fighting to save it against the severest of droughts and the poachers fighting for their own survival. On top of this, Western sanctions are biting hard…

Inspired by true events, CHEETAH is a love song to the fabled cheetah itself, to the richness of Persian culture, to the golden-hearted people that the author met, and to the resilience of the human spirit.

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Originally, CHEETAH was written as a stage play and then rewritten as a screenplay. The screenplay got close to production in 2023 but wasn’t made. Because of the urgency of the issue it was re-envisioned as a story with illustrations in 2025. CHEETAH the Book is the result. The illustrations are by the Persian artist and illustrator, Sama Soltani.