I don’t think it’s too much to say that, if enough people read Disoriental the world might actually become a better place.”-Tina Kover The genius of this story is that it acknowledges and celebrates what makes us different while, at its heart, painting in exquisite detail what binds us. Translating Disoriental has been one of the greatest honors of my professional life. I love the Sadrs as if they were real people. “Djavadi has given us a broad-ranging, far-reaching portrait of the human condition in all its agony and ecstasy, but she has told it through the lives and perspectives of a family we might easily imagine having over for an evening of dinner and board games. PRAISE FOR DISORIENTALįrom the translator. Yet 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.

In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. 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. Now twenty-five, with a new life and the prospect of a child, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which reach her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. WINNER 2019 Albertine Prize 2019 Lambda Literary Award Prix du Style Prix de la Porte Dorée 2016 Lire Best Debut Novel Le Prix du Roman NewsįINALIST 2018 National Book Award 2019 CLMP Firecracker Award 2019 Best Translated Book Award The story of a young girl and her family, at the core of an exploration of Iranian history

Disoriental négar djavadi