An evening with Sanam Mahloudji | The West Kirby Bookshop
Arts
Join us on Thursday 16th January, 7pm, when we'll be joined by debut novelist Sanam Mahloudji, to celebrate the publication of The Persians- one of our most anticipated novels of 2025. Sanam will be reading from the book, before being in conversation with Jordan from the bookshop, answering questions from the audience and signing copies of The Persians. Tickets are £6/ £20 (including a copy of the book) and complimentary drinks will be provided. Please note that tickets are non-refundable and if you can't make the event and would like to reserve a signed & dedicated copy of The Persians, do get in touch. About The Persians: 'A wonderful multi-generational family drama with characters you really care about. I'm still thinking about them now. I enjoyed it enormously.' --- Marian Keyes ‘An ambitious, glorious feat. Five women's voices become one irresistible whole in this darkly funny, richly satisfying, wonderful debut.’ --- Sarah Winman ‘At once funny and profound, sprawling and personal, The Persians questions history’s grip on our lives―is it possible to free ourselves from the past, and do we even want to? A gloriously engrossing debut.’ --- Tash Aw A darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions personal and political. Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they're nobodies. First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone in a shabby apartment except when she is visited by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose, and somehow manages to survive. Across the ocean in America, Elizabeth’s daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family's future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in the privileged hills of Los Angeles. And then there's the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student spending her days in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings. When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family's brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never even mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow together? Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, these five women are pulled apart and brought together by revolutions personal and political. The Persians is a darkly funny, deeply moving and profoundly searching portrait of a unique family in crisis. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all. About Sanam Mahloudji: Sanam Mahloudji is a writer from Los Angeles and Iran, living in London. Her debut novel, The Persians will be published in the UK & the US in 2025. Sanam won a Pushcart Prize for her story, 'Slut Days', first published in the Idaho Review. The story was reprinted in the 2023 Pushcart anthology and distributed by W.W. Norton. Sanam’s fiction also appears in the Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Passages North and elsewhere. She was nominated for a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.
Information Source: The West Kirby Bookshop | eventbrite
