About the Novel
A beautiful nineteen-year-old named Gilda becomes the mistress of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. She dreams of becoming his wife. The narrator, in love with Gilda, follows clues about her death two years after the affair. During an assassination attempt on the Shah, he gets shot on the steps of the Marble Palace. As he puts it, "I took a bullet for my king up the ass and got a jester's seat, the best seat, to watch the fall of the Persian Empire." It's a love story that follows the best traditions of The Beauty and the Beast. We enter the rarified atmosphere of the court, the young woman's life, and the reasons for her death. We follow the characters through the Paris of Madame Claude, the Shah's ski resort at St. Moritz, and Doctor Pitanguy's plastic surgery clinic in Baden Baden. The story, full of intrigue and rare glimpses into Shah's private life, eschews easy labels. The Shah's sexual adventurism didn't stop his liberal policies for women's rights. Compared with Khomeini, whose dutiful love letters to his wife belie the disaster he wrought on Iranian women. It's a compelling portrait of a royal dynasty whose fall has profoundly impacted the modern world. The recent women's protests in Iran will heighten interest in the book. To kill is an action. Killing is a process. Killing Gilda is one woman's story trapped in a gilded cage.
About the Author: Born in Iran, the author earned an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. He has published short stories in The Kenyon and Massachusetts Review. The novel 1001: Persiranian Stories of Love and Revenge was a critical success. He currently resides in Wellesley, Massachusetts. (Please Scroll to see more)
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Author's Background
I attended the UNH graduate writing program well over 35 years ago. My professor, Thomas Williams (winner of NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 1975), advised me to write short stories before attempting a novel. "Novels can drown you if you are not an experienced swimmer." Boy was he right. My second short story, the Mirror Triptych, got hold of me (just the title should have been a warning to me), and twenty-five years later comes this novel.
My goals began nobly enough. I wrote to remind the young of the contrast between the high-mindedness of the 1906 revolution and the cynical power grab of the 1979 revolution; a protest against a regime that has tried to create a break in the continuity of our history by attempting to erase art and culture.
Inexperience fed the structure and, when young, oh, what a tangled web we can weave. Throw up the juggler's batons one by one. To catch them as they fell took a lifetime's practice. It is a complex novel, no doubt, but I promise it does not end with shortcuts. I am still hounded by the feeling that I might have a loose end. None of my readers have found any. It is not a who-done-it but a why-done-it. Three "I" narrators -- a mad surgeon of the late Shah, an obese tea room owner, and a gay scion of an aristocratic family -- all tell the story of the Poonaki family.
Michael Ondaatje writes: “The first sentence of every novel should be: ‘Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.’" When writing about a different culture, the usual difficulties with names and places make the first fifty pages sometimes difficult. Please persevere. There is order here.
Author's Background
I attended the UNH graduate writing program well over 35 years ago. My professor, Thomas Williams (winner of NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 1975), advised me to write short stories before attempting a novel. "Novels can drown you if you are not an experienced swimmer." Boy was he right. My second short story, the Mirror Triptych, got hold of me (just the title should have been a warning to me), and twenty-five years later comes this novel.
My goals began nobly enough. I wrote to remind the young of the contrast between the high-mindedness of the 1906 revolution and the cynical power grab of the 1979 revolution; a protest against a regime that has tried to create a break in the continuity of our history by attempting to erase art and culture.
Inexperience fed the structure and, when young, oh, what a tangled web we can weave. Throw up the juggler's batons one by one. To catch them as they fell took a lifetime's practice. It is a complex novel, no doubt, but I promise it does not end with shortcuts. I am still hounded by the feeling that I might have a loose end. None of my readers have found any. It is not a who-done-it but a why-done-it. Three "I" narrators -- a mad surgeon of the late Shah, an obese tea room owner, and a gay scion of an aristocratic family -- all tell the story of the Poonaki family.
Michael Ondaatje writes: “The first sentence of every novel should be: ‘Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.’" When writing about a different culture, the usual difficulties with names and places make the first fifty pages sometimes difficult. Please persevere. There is order here.