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"Gharb-e Arezou" is a collection of short stories that explore the journey of a young woman named Arezou—meaning "dream" in Persian—to the West ("Gharb").
The book offers a nuanced narrative of Arezou’s experiences as an Iranian in U.S. academia. Each story forms a piece of the intricate puzzle of Arezou’s life as she navigates the complexities of working and raising children in a foreign culture, constantly torn between staying in the U.S. or returning to Iran, grappling with the emotional weight of news from her homeland, and confronting the taboos that have followed her across borders.
Selected Fiction
Selected Fiction
Empty Boxes
Empty Boxes
Published in Asymptote
Translated from the Persian by Rodmehr Seddigh
A story about family memory, cultural transmission, and the difficulty of raising children between languages and worlds.
“The challenge of this translation, then, is exactly the challenge the story conveys: when everything around you is in English, how do you keep hold of the other culture you need to transmit?”
— Rodmehr Seddigh, translator’s note in Asymptote
Maghāk (The Abyss)
Maghāk (The Abyss)
Shortlisted in the National section of the 2025 Simorgh Literary Prize
Set in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, “Maghāk” follows a woman deciphering a centuries-old Persian manuscript whose mysteries begin to intersect with her personal life and her awareness of declining fertility. The story explores the connections between the body and the archive, creation and loss, and the desire to recover meaning from what time has obscured.
Reader Responses
Reader Responses
"I laughed, cried, and felt the pain and beauty of being far from home..."
— Goodreads review
"I specially appreciated the non-linear structure of the narrative; the stories unforld like scattered puzzle pieces, each contributing meaningfully to the whole and inviting the reader to delight in assembling them."
--- Goodreads review
"I started this on a Sunday and ended up staying awake past midnight to finish it in one go. The story is rich with familiar emotions, told with a natural flow and brought to life by the author's beautiful voice."
--- Apple Books review
"It felt like the author was sitting right across from me, telling her story live...."
---- Google Play review
"As a first-generation immigrant and a mother who has struggled for years to balance professional and family life, I connected deeply with every story and character."
---- Google Play review
Work in Progress
Work in Progress
Mostajab-zadeh
Mostajab-zadeh
A Novel in Progress
Set across Iran and California and moving between the 1930s and the present, Mostajab-zadeh follows four generations of an Iranian family whose lives are shaped by faith, modernization, migration, and inherited memory. The novel explores how unspoken histories travel across generations—and how the past continues to inhabit the lives of those who leave home.
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