LOS ANGELES - s4story -- Iran is in the headlines again, and readers will appreciate a book that explains how U.S-Iran relations and Iran-Israel relations are what they are today, through characters at odds with one another.

Set in Iran circa 1978-1979, Ziba is an impressionistic brushstroke, depicting Iran as it spirals into revolution while the Azadi family is divided by opposing allegiances.

Ziba is tearing her marriage apart due to a cheating heart and because she feels alienated in the royal court. Her daughter from a first marriage, Nasreen, is a socialist, a punk-rock poet, who has grown rebellious, event truant, after being cast out of Ziba's new family.

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ZIBA, Longlisted for The Grindstone Literary Novel Prize

Afarin Majidi is an Iranian-American writer. She holds a BA in English Literature from Barnard College and an MFA in Fiction Writing from New School University. Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror (2017) is her debut memoir. Her novel Ziba (2024) is set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/447440