Disoriental is a brilliant debut novel by Négar Djavaidi, a French-Iranian screenwriter and filmmaker. This family saga is told by Kimiâ Sadr, a daughter of Iranian intellectuals and political dissidents exiled in Paris. For the narrator, it’s not the blood of her relatives that flows through her veins and defines who she is, but their stories. And she writes to not let these stories vanish. Kimiâ retraces her history back to her grandmother zooming into her family’s life and zooming out to masterfully interweave it with the history of modern Iran. Although the novel touches on heavy themes, the author does it with elegance and humour that alleviates the atmosphere of tragic moments.

In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph.

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.

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

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