Iran – Mythili G. Rao

I’ve fallen behind on updating this site! Some recent (well, from the last six-ish months) book reviews and podcast projects below.

For the Financial Times:

I reviewed An Ordinary Youth by Walter Kempowski, a 1971 autobiographical German novel now available in English for the first time (translated by Michael Lipkin). It’s a book about the language used by a society complicit in genocide—but also about the sensory experience of childhood. (Some say it’s timely.)
I reviewed The Coiled Serpent, a new collection of creepy short stories by Camilla Grudova, one of Granta’s Best Young British novelists for 2023. (Pairs well with Paula Rego’s paintings.)
I reviewed Andrey Kurkov’s new crime novel, The Silver Bone, a historic crime novel set in wartime Ukraine translated by Boris Dralyuk. It made me consider Kurkov’s fear that the war might destroy Ukrainians’ connection to the language he loves.
I also reviewed Real Americans by Rachel Khong, an ambitious novel about money, migration, dreams, secrets and the lure of scientific progress.

For the Washington Post:

I reviewed two new books about sound—Listen by Michel Faber and A Book of Noises by Caspar Henderson. (They made me think about the relationship the protagonist of The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks has with sound, so I wrote about that too.)

For the Guardian:

I reviewed What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom by Arash Azizi. As a follow-up, Intelligence Squared invited me to interview him; you can hear our conversation here.
I reviewed Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang. It’s a wonderful book, and these women’s stories have stayed with me. (Pairs well with The Economist’s excellent Drum Tower podcast.)

A few other projects: The final series I was responsible for overseeing at Novel late last year, a sprawling investigation into wildlife trafficking called “The Wild Life” is now out. It’s built on hundreds of hours of undercover recordings from the spy who brought down one of the biggest African wildlife trafficking syndicates—and so much more. It’s also the first time I’ve shared a production credit with Drake (yes, that Drake).

Also now out in the world is a local news/true crime hybrid pilot I worked on for BBC Sounds. It’s the story of the long, colorful career of a fraudster named David Levi from the town of Lytham St. Annes near Blackpool. Over the years he’s dabbled in eBay phishing, cannabis shipping, and cruise-ship credit card fraud, but in his latest scam, he pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds impersonating the sacred British icon Pudsey Bear.

And in March, I started a new job as the producer of Zero! It’s a terrific show about the policies, tactics, and technologies taking us to a future of zero emissions. A few highlights have included this barn-burner of an interview with former Conservative MP Chris Skidmore (which caught the attention of the FT) and taking a turn on-mic in this conversation about Microsoft’s rising emissions.

Hot Reads! I took a little break from reviewing in September/October to get married. It was grand. This is the first post-wedding set of reviews.

Goli Taraghi’s The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons was the standout of this set:

Born in Tehran in 1939, Goli Taraghi was a teenager during Iran’s 1953 coup and a grown woman during the 1979 revolution. Both upheavals feature prominently in her writing, but the stories collected in The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons are hardly polemical. Political tumult instead merely provides the backdrop of the transformations of her characters, young and old. The adolescent girls of “Flowers of Shiraz” can hardly comprehend the change underway in their country: In the run-up to Mossadeq’s ouster, they ride their bikes through the city, meeting for ice cream, flirting with boys, and racing through the hills, despite the protests on the streets. Mitra, Gol-Maryam and Parivash wear their political allegiances as lightly as their crushes. That’s not to say Taraghi isn’t interested in history’s course; she plays a long game in many of her stories, following the fates of characters across decades and continents. In “The Gentleman Thief,” a math teacher-turned-smalltime-burglar sneaks into the narrator’s house. “Excuse me,” he says. “With your permission I will take this bowl and clock and I will leave.” (Before escaping out the window, he asks for a glass of water, too.) Only many years later does his full story emerge, when the narrator returns from Paris to visit her ailing uncle. Much to her surprise, the former thief is now her uncle’s caretaker and loyal companion. A similarly complicated fate unfolds in “Amina’s Great Journey,” the tale of a big-eyed Bangladeshi maid named Amina who spends her days daydreaming of movie stars. The story charts Amina’s slow transformation from a gullible young girl who is complicit in her greedy husband’s abuse to a confident woman intent on educating her children. Taraghi carves out space for mysterious forces—powerful coincidences, supernatural spirits and uncontrollable compulsions—in her stories. But at the heart of these tales are just ordinary people, caught in strange times.

For the rest of the week’s reviews, head over to The Daily Beast.

Tag Archives: Iran

Recent book reviews: fiction by Walter Kempowski, Camilla Grudova, Andrey Kurkov; nonfiction by Michel Faber, Caspar Henderson, Arash Azizi, and Yuan Yang (plus, podcasts)

Hot Reads: The Pomegranate Lady and Her Son, Nefertiti in the Flak Tower, You Are Not Forgotten