Book Review of The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
Five Persian women from three generations of a wealthy but troubled family split between US and Iran, squabble over hidden secrets and uncertain futures.
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Extravert Shirin faces jail or deportation after an ill-judged jibe at a police officer in Aspen. Bita, her niece, is floundering after her mother’s death. Matriarch Elizabeth is a recluse in Tehran, where Shirin’s estranged daughter Niaz experiments with rebellion.
Before the Revolution, the Valiats were respected among the Iranian elite. Now, their only shield is their money, as their ancestry means nothing in the US and counts against them in Iran. Elizabeth has been nursing a guilty secret that could blow the family apart.
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Narrated in turn by the five women, and skipping back and forth in time as far back as the 1960s, The Persians slowly builds a picture of a proud culture upturned by the Islamic revolution and misunderstood in America.
The novel is carried by two forceful characters. Shirin delights in ostentatious luxury and causing outrage by being outspoken, a more complex Persian version of Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Niaz stayed behind in Tehran with her grandmother as a child, and flirts with resistance to the regime and defiant hedonism in equal measure. By contrast Bita, Seema and the cold matriarch Elizabeth seem muted, with little agency.
The scenes of extravagance and outrageous behaviour, whilst amusing, rather overshadow the more subtle points about growing up under Islamic rule in Tehran, and the loneliness of expats in America. I found Bita’s experience of having to conceal the truth about her family at school particularly heartrending.
I sense the author, an Iranian based in the US, has based many of the characters on people she knows or has observed. This is her debut, so I hope that future novels will mine the more subtle aspects of her experience.
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize.
Author website: https://www.sanammahloudji.com/
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