Disoriental
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
National Book Award Finalist: "A multigenerational epic of the Sadr family's life in Iran and their eventual exile . . . Full of surprises" (The Globe and Mail).
Winner of the 2019 Albertine Prize and Lambda Literary Award
Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them.
It is Kimiâ herself—punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own "disorientalization"—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel, recipient of numerous literary honors.
"Where initially Disoriental seems focused on Kimiâ's father and his pro-democracy activism—first against the Shah, then the Ayatollah Khomeini—this is truly Kimiâ's story of disorientation—national, familial and sexual—and finding herself again." —The Globe and Mail
"A tour de force of storytelling . . . Djavadi deftly weaves together the history of 20th-century Iran [and] the spellbinding chronicle of her own ancestors. . . . Perfectly blends historical fact with contemporary themes." —Library Journal
"Riveting . . . Djavadi is an immensely gifted storyteller, and Kimiâ's tale is especially compelling." —Booklist (starred review)
"A wonder and a pleasure to read." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
WINNER 2019 ALBERTINE PRIZE
WINNER 2019 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD
FINALIST 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
FINALIST 2019 CLMP FIRECRACKER AWARD
FINALIST 2019 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD
WINNER LE PRIX DU ROMAN NEWS
WINNER STYLE PRIZE
WINNER 2016 LIRE BEST DEBUT NOVEL
WINNER LA PORTE DORÉE PRIZE
ONE OF THE GLOBE & MAIL'S BEST BOOKS OF 2018
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Once we picked up this colorful, messy story of a queer Iranian French woman, we never wanted to put it down. As Kimiâ Sadr sits in a Paris hospital awaiting artificial insemination, she ruminates on the near-mythic history of her sprawling Persian clan. Kimiâ envisions the tyranny of her great-grandfather and his harem, her childhood escape from Iran to France, her own queer awakening, and the terrible event that left her radical journalist father dead and her fiercely brilliant mother in a permanently disconnected state. What’s incredible about Négar Djavadi’s semi-autobiographical novel is that it makes Kimiâ’s tumultuous story feel totally relatable, particularly the tension between pleasing her parents and pursuing her dreams. Disoriental is a beautiful story about family legacy and personal identity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Djavadi's momentous first novel is a both a multigenerational family saga and a history of modern Iran. Narrated by 25-year-old Kimia Sadr, the story opens in 1996 in a fertility clinic in Paris, but Kimia's Iranian ancestors' stories take over right there in the waiting room, careening back and forth in time. Many generations of Sadrs make appearances: a great-grandfather obsessed with blue-eyed descendants, a grandmother born in a harem, uncles known numerically by birth order. When Kimia is still quite young, her journalist father, the blue-eyed Darius Sadr, is forced to flee Iran after his outspoken criticism, first of the shah, and then of Khomeini. In 1981, when Kimia is 10, she, her sisters, and her mother, Sara, cross dangerous mountains on horseback to join Darius in Paris, where their home becomes a dangerous hub of expat dissident activity. Kimia rebels, traveling Europe looking for a new self in debauchery and punk rock. Violence, meanwhile, follows the family to Europe, with tragic consequences. The novel convincingly and powerfully explores the enormous weight of one's family and culture on individual identity, especially the exile's.
