Nahid Rachlin

REVIEWS:

NPR: THE WORLD
Slected by Christopher Merrill, the Director of Iowa International Writing Program as one of the best four books of 2006. "If you want to know what it was like to grow up in Iran this is the book to read. Rachlin, the author of five previous works of fiction, including the much acclaimed Foreigner, begins her story at the age of nine, when she was taken away from the only mother she had ever known—her aunt, as it happens—and returned to a family in which the prospects of her becoming a writer were, at best, dim. But her portrait of the artist in an Islamic country on the verge of dramatic change is filled with light."

Publishers Weekly:
"This lyrical and disturbing memoir by the author of four novels (Foreigner , etc.) tells the story of an Iranian girl growing up in a culture where, despite the Westernizing reforms of the Shah, women had little power or autonomy... Exuding the melancholy of an outsider, this memoir gives American readers rare insight into Iranians' ambivalence toward the United States, the desire for American freedom clashing with resentment of American hegemony."

Boston Globe:
"Persian Girls, reads like a novel -- suspenseful, vivid, heartbreaking. In "Persian Girls, Rachlin chronicles her choices and those made by her sisters, her mother and her aunts, throwing the door to her family's home wide open. Readers who follow her through will be wiser, and moved."

The Charlotte Observer:
"Iran again looms large on the world stage. Rhetoric conjures fear of radical Islam and flashbacks to the Ayatollah Khomeini-- images that obscure Iran's rich cultural history as Persia and ignore ordinary people torn between old and new, secular and sacred. In her bittersweet memoir, Persian Girls, Iranian American novelist Nahid Rachlin fills in the blanks."

Washington Post:
"Nahid Rachlin grew up in Iran in the days of the shah, and the details of her difficult life in this sorrowful memoir reflect the recent history of that conflicted country. The author recalls an idyllic early childhood, growing up with a widowed, childless aunt who considered herself Nahid's real mother. (In a story that could have come out of the Old Testament, Nahid's birth mother, who had four..."

Jonathan Friedlander, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies:
“Rachlin’s most powerful work to date. A riveting memoir of separation and reunion and the diasporic life and times of this prolific and beloved Iranian-American author.”

Matt Beynon Rees, author of The Collaborator of Bethlehem and contributing editor, Time:
“Through the touching, tragic story of two sisters, Persian Girls unfolds the entire drama of modern Iran. It’s a beautiful, harrowing memoir of the cruelty of men toward women, and it paints the exotic scents and traditions of Tehran with the delicacy of a great novel. If you want to understand Iran, read Nahid Rachlin.”

Abbas Milani, Director, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, Stanford University:
“In elegant, beguiling, supple prose, Nahid Rachlin has chronicled the traumas and triumphs of a Persian girl, fashioning for herself a persona that is at once global and quintessentially Persian.”

Salar Abdoh, author of Opium and The Poet Game:
“In Persian Girls, Nahid Rachlin tells her own story with sincerity—speaking for countless lives in many lands where survival is as exceptional as being buried under the dead weight of tradition is not.”

Dona Munker, coauthor of Daughter of Persia:
“Riveting and beautifully observed, Persian Girls recounts Nahid Rachlin’s family epic with the same quietly mesmerizing power that makes her novels and short stories linger in the mind years after we’ve read the last page.”

Patty Dann, author of Mermaids and The Baby Boat:
“Rachlin’s remarkable memoir sheds light on an intimate world that is at the center of the world’s stage. With a deft hand, she writes of a life so honestly that it is has all the facets of a great novel.”


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DUST JACKET DESCRIPTION:
This beautifully written memoir by esteemed novelist Nahid Rachlin parts the curtain on one Iranian household—delving into the complex and fascinating dynamics of growing up female in a paternalistic society—as Nahid tells of the different paths taken by her and her sisters.

For many years, heartache prevented Rachlin from turning her sharp novelist’s eye inward: to tell the story of how her own life diverged from that of her closest confidante and beloved sister, Pari. As adolescents, both refused to accept traditional Muslim mores, and dreamed of careers in literature and on the stage; they devoured forbidden books and entertained secret romances. Their lives changed abruptly when Pari was coerced to marry a wealthy, cruel suitor who kept her a virtual prisoner in her own home. Nahid narrowly avoided becoming the bride of a man of her parents’ choosing, and instead negotiated with her father to pursue her studies in America.

As Nahid began to achieve literary success in the United States and to loosen family binds, Pari’s dreams dwindled: her husband quashed her every hope and ambition. When Nahid received the unsettling and mysterious news that Pari had died after falling down a flight of stairs, she traveled back to Iran—now under the Islamic regime—to find out what happened to her truest friend, confront her past, and evaluate what the future holds for the heartbroken.

Persian Girls traces not only Nahid’s life, but also the interconnected lives of her aunt, mother, and sisters, in a tale of crushing sorrow, sisterhood, and ultimately, hope.

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