Shiva Rahbaran was born in Tehran, and was eight years old when the Shah was exiled in 1979. She and her family left Iran for Germany in 1984. She studied literature and political science at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, before completing a PhD supervised by [[Christopher Butler (literary scholar)|] at [[Oxford University]], on the writer [[Nicholas Mosley]]. The study was later published by [[Dalkey Archive Press]].