Nahid Rachlin

Foreigner

About FOREIGNER:

"I am so impressed with Nahid Rachlin’s style--its purity and sparseness and immediacy. In remarkable few words, she has managed to bring to life an entire small pocket of existence… a rare intimate look at Iranians who are poorer and less educated... I have read (this book) four times by now, and each time I have discovered new layers in it. The voice is cool and pure. Bleak is the right word, if you will understand that bleakness can have a startling beauty."
-- Anne Tyler, NY Times Book Review

"... an accomplished Iranian novel... FOREIGNER avoids political comment. Its protest is more oblique, the political constriction drives the passion deeper, and the novel with all its air of innocence, is a novel of violation, helplessness and defeat."
-- V.S. Naipaul, from Among the Believers

“Foreigner is as spare as Camus’ The Stranger and with some of its enigmatic force. Nahid Rachlin conveys brilliantly an experience of estrangement, alienation on returning to the place of her childhood.”
--Professor Albert Guerard, Stanford University

Selected Works

NOVELS

PERSIAN GIRLS (Penguin) AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK, KINDLE, and other ebooks

REVIEW: NPR: The World, selected as ONE OF THE BEST FOUR BOOKS OF the year, by Christopher Merrill, Director of Iowa International Writing program: "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."

JUMPING OVER FIRE (available in paperback, Kindle and other ebooks

"If, as Aristotle reminds us, we are our desire,
then who are we if the object of our desire is
forbidden? What becomes of us if we are born in one world yet long for another? These are just two of the
complex and difficult questions Nahid Rachlin explores
and ultimately illuminates in this brave, engrossing,
and timely novel. I recommend it highly!"--Andre (Dubus III),author of House of Sand and Fog, and In the Bedroom

FOREIGNER, available in paperback, Kindle, and other ebooks

"... a rare intimate look at Iranians who are poorer and less educated... I have read (this book) four times by now, and each time I have discovered new layers in it. The voice is cool and pure. Bleak is the right word, if you will understand that bleakness can have a startling beauty."

--Anne Tyler, New York Times Book Review

MARRIED TO A STRANGER (available in paperback)

Crowd of Sorrows, novella

review: Chicago Tribune:
In "Crowd of Sorrows Nahid Rachlin weaves a story of displacement and loss, centered on the idea that we build our homes around the people we love. Newly separated from her husband, Zora moves to a seemingly idyllic apartment complex to raise her daughter Anar. From the courtyard, they can see through the wide back windows to the building's young families. Zora imagines play dates and companionship, a place for the family of two to find their footing as the divorce is finalized. Instead, she discovers life at the complex is dominated by jealousies and petty scandals. Just when everything begins to settle, disaster strikes: Anar goes missing. In the search and its aftermath, Zora must come to terms with her ideas about security, independence and motherhood. The writing captures the gasping panic of Anar's disappearance beautifully. In a way, it's a story about the flipside of love: the consuming fear of loss.

Interviewed by Jessica Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

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