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The Persians

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

By: Sanam Mahloudji

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Paperback | 5 March 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
384 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.5

Paperback

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'The word-of-mouth breakout' STYLIST'I enjoyed it enormously' MARIAN KEYES'Mesmerising' MONICA ALI'Glorious' SARAH WINMAN'Funny and profound' TASH AW‘Exuberant, comic, perceptive’ AMINA CAINA riotously funny and moving debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down

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 is kept company by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter. In America, Elizabeth’s two daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family's future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in Los Angeles. And then there's the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student 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 and gossip about them spreads like wildfire. 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 mattered to anyone? And, will reputation be enough to make them a family again?

Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s The Persians is an irresistible portrait of a unique family in crisis that explores timeless questions of love, money, art and fulfilment. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.

A most anticipated novel of 2025 in Stylist, BBC, iNews and Publishers Weekly.

About the Author

Sanam Mahloudji was born in Tehran and grew up in Los Angeles after leaving Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Her fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the Kenyon Review, the Idaho Review, Passages North and elsewhere. She was nominated for a 2018 PEN/Robert J Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for her first published story.

Industry Reviews

'The word-of-mouth breakout' - STYLIST

'I enjoyed it enormously' - MARIAN KEYES

'Mesmerising' - MONICA ALI

'Glorious' - SARAH WINMAN

'Funny and profound' - TASH AW

‘Exuberant, comic, perceptive’ - AMINA CAIN

'As exuberant as it is sharp’ - iNEWS

'A sweeping and irreverent tale' - BBC

'Funny, unexpected and riotous … will have you hooked' - STYLIST

‘Filled with heartbreak, humour, and so much love’ - VANESSA CHAN

'A very brilliant, very special book' - JESSICA STANLEY

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