Dalia Sofer is the author of the novels Man of My Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)—a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of 2020, and The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press, 2007)—also selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her novels have been translated and published in 16 countries. A recipient of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Sami Rohr Choice Award, the Sirenland Fellowship, the Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship, and multiple residencies at Yaddo, Sofer has contributed essays and reviews to various publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Review of Books, and The Believer. Sofer is a distinguished lecturer at The City College of New York, CUNY.
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The Septembers of ShirazA Novel
“He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint – what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “ Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe… I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”
“Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”
The Septembers of Shiraz:A Novel -
The Septembers of ShirazA Novel
Through the water’s gurgle comes a prisoner’s cry, followed by guards’ admonitions. In a nearby stall he sees Ramin, his nose bleeding, being stripped by two guards and shoved under the water. The boy’s arms form parentheses on his emaciated torso, his hands cupping his genitals, shielding them from view. The water gathering under his feet and swirling into the drain is pink. “That’ll teach you!” one of the guards says. “When we say wake up, we mean wake up. This is not the Plaza, you son of a dog.”
The Septembers of Shiraz:A Novel -
The Septembers of ShirazA Novel
What jars him out of sleep is not the sound of the bullet itself, but the thump of the body falling to the ground a second later. Afterward there is always silence. He wonders what they do with the bodies. Most likely they leave them on the ground and pick them up the next morning, like dishes left over after a dinner party.
The Septembers of Shiraz:A Novel
“ . . . The Septembers of Shiraz is a remarkable debut: the richly evocative, powerfully affecting depiction of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran shortly after the revolution. In this fickle literary world, it's impossible to predict whether Sofer's novel will become a classic, but it certainly stands a chance.” —Claire Messud, The New York Times
“The Septembers of Shiraz rises above being an ethnic novel about an intriguing place. It does not exoticize the Middle East or focus unduly on tempting targets such as women being forced to cover themselves or the persecution of Jews. These things exist, but they are part of a panoply of strangeness wrought upon everyone regardless of religion, gender or class. Instead, the book is about how people, in any country, live mostly without thinking about the political implications of their choices, and how they are taken by surprise when revolution or war crashes in.” —Tara Bahrampour, The Washington Post
“Sofer successfully uses the rich details of a sense-saturated country to emphasize how alone her characters feel despite an appearance of family and comfort . . . as Sofer elegantly demonstrates in this novel . . . the true survivor is one who learns to preserve his identity.” —The Jewish Daily Forward [on The Septembers of Shiraz]
