A woman's struggle for self-realization in contemporary Iran, a novel
with "the clarity and spare sensuousness of Persian poetry or miniature
painting."--Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
When Minou Hakini marries a man of her own choosing--an intellectual and
a radical--and moves to Abadan, a thriving oil town near the Iraqi
border, she imagines her life will be adventurous and liberating. Before
long, however, she becomes aware of her husband's suspicious liaisons
and dangerous activities. Her struggle to forge her own identity as a
woman in contemporary Iran is charged with passion, anger and finally a
need to escape.
"The ecstasies and disillusionments of first love are the stuff of great
tragedies and cheap romances, but Nahid Rachlin has done something else
with this familiar theme, and something more, though her style is
elegantly simple . . . "--The New York Times Book Review
" . . . Rachlin (Foreigner) tells her story with economy and
suspensefulness, weaving strands of unstable political life and sexual
secrecy--in a small, vivid closeup of life in Iran at that fateful hour,
within a society that had become its own prisoner."--Kirkus Reviews
Nahid Rachlin is an Iranian-American who lives in New York and teaches
at Barnard College. She is the author of Foreigner and The Heart's
Desire, both novels, and Veils, a collection of short stories.
