The Persians
Five women of one rich Iranian family, from revolutionary Tehran to Aspen, played mostly as comedy.
Not, as the title suggests, a historical novel. Mahloudji writes five women of one wealthy Iranian family across Tehran and Aspen, before and after the revolution, and the register is closer to comedy than to elegy. A grandmother who stayed, daughters who left, a granddaughter arrested in Aspen: the money is old, the behaviour is not dignified, and the jokes carry the loss.
Recommended by 1 Person
Kit de Waal
The joy. It’s very funny, and it’s so unexpected. When I picked up the book, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t want to read any blurb or reviews, I just came to the work very clean. So I thought, when I picked this up, that it would be a historical novel about the Persians. I expected a different country, a different time, a different culture. But then this opens and it’s like the Kardashians of Aspen.
Interview · April 2025
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