This Iran Novel Has Everyone Wondering Why
The Californer/10313503

LOS ANGELES - Californer -- Ziba, eponymous heroine of the début novel by Iranian-American author Afarin Majidi, is married to Farhad, a faithful servant of the Shah, who has "rescued" her from an abusive first marriage but is at odds with her fiery leftist daughter by that marriage, Nasreen. Ziba loves her chauffeur Reza, who is secretly an anti-royalist spying on Farhad. Nasreen is a poet, devoted to Rilke and Sylvia Plath, in love with the student radical Kamal but seducing the soldier Essie "for the cause".

Meanwhile, Iran is "slowly turning into an American shopping mall where Muslims and the poor were unwelcome." Muslims pin their hopes on the Ayatollah Khomeini, whose son was allegedly murdered by the Shah's secret service SAVAK, while for leftists the Mullahs (clerics) "are no different from the royalists...with the same sense of entitlement, just based on a different bloodline." Revolution is in the air, violence is rife, and those with the means are quietly negotiating their exile.

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Majidi weaves these tangled threads together into a rich fabric that is often tragic but sometimes unexpectedly comic.

Given the historical significance of the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the Shah, it's remarkable how little resonance it has found in English-language literature. Perhaps the backing the Shah received from the US and UK and the role that Iran plays nowadays as an official enemy of the West have ensured that literary explorations of the Revolution's complex history are deemed unwelcome. And perhaps this explains why Ziba, is "independently published" (as was her harrowing 2017 memoir Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror) rather than issued by a major publisher. This is a shame, because both memoir and novel deserve wider dissemination.

Visit https://www.afarinmajidi.com/ or buy the book on Amazon.