At the beginning of Disoriental, by Négar Djavadi and translated by Tina Kover, we sit down in the waiting room of a fertility clinic with Kimiâ Sadr. Kimiâ is attempting to realize a lifelong dream of having a child. To pass the time with us, she tells us how she ended up here—a tale that involves going back to the last years of the nineteenth century to explain how the events experienced and decisions made by her parents and grandparents brought her to Paris in the early 2000s.
The saga of the Sadr family is a winding one; a story about one relative leads to another. Kimiâ’s retelling circles around the Iranian Revolution and something called THE EVENT (only fully explained near the end of the book). Along the way, we see Iranian society transformed from its lingering feudalism up through the 1970s and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Sadrs are at the heart of these transformations. In the late 1800s in Mazandaran Province, Kimiâ’s great-grandfather was powerful rural lord who ruled with a worryingly distracted iron first. Her grandfather was a wheeler-dealer in Qazvin until his past caught up with him and the family left their ancestral holdings in the north and moved to Tehran. Both of her parents were dissidents under the Shah and Khomeini until they fled to exile in France.
In the same way that Iran is torn between tradition and stubborn progressiveness, so is the Sadr family. It takes a few chapters for Kimiâ to reveal why she lives on the periphery of her tightly knit family, but her homosexuality is as undeniable as modernity is to Iran. One of Kimiâ’s uncles was gay and never allowed to live the way he wanted. He suppressed sexuality so that the family could carry on without being forced to change or face scandal. Later and half a world away, Kimiâ has the opportunity to follow her heart wherever it leads. She struggles against her family, who want her to pretend to be “normal,” but she is much more free than anyone in her family ever was. There is pain and struggle, but Kimiâ doesn’t have to hide herself.
Kimiâ is a wonderful guide not only to a very interesting family but also the recent history of Iran. Her way of circling back around gives us plenty of opportunities to learn why Iran (and Kimiâ) are the way they are. Some readers might find her overly academic. I didn’t at all. Of course, I am an academic myself so my scale is probably off. At any rate, I devoured Disoriental. I loved the way the story moved around and around, the depth of history I was able to explore, and the fascinating relationships between the Sadr family members. This book was a great introduction to a country I don’t think I’ve visited in fiction before.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration. It will be released 17 April 2018.