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Fiction Arabian Peninsula

Zulaikha

by (author) Niloufar-Lily Soltani

Publisher
Inanna Publications
Initial publish date
Jun 2024
Category
Arabian Peninsula, NON-CLASSIFIABLE, Contemporary Women
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771339568
    Publish Date
    Nov 2023
    List Price
    $24.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781771339575
    Publish Date
    Jun 2024
    List Price
    $19.99

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Description

In the winter of 2007, Zulaikha is travelling from Amsterdam to Tehran when she is approached by Kia, a family acquaintance she hasn's seen for many years, who is on the same flight. Kia's father has passed away and she is flying home to attend his funeral. In a shocking twist, Zulaikha suspects that Kia may have had information about her missing brother, Hessam, and their mutual friend, Abbass, who was murdered before Hessam's disappearance during the Iran and Iraq War.

When the flight is suddenly cancelled, and Zulaikha is later taken into custody and questioned about her relationship with Kia by both the European and Iranian authorities, who ultimately confiscate her passport, a tense thriller unfolds revealing the impacts of war and the consequences for one young woman unknowingly caught in the crossfire of greed, power, and international politics.

This sweeping novel explores many timely topics including issues related to gender, class, race, and interracial marriage. It also sheds light on the tumultuous history of Iran from a new perspective. The novel reveals a forty-year period of war and upheaval in the Middle East, and specifically, in Zulaikha's home territory of Khuzestan, which boasts the bulk of Iran's oil reserves, a place of intense tension between Iran and the U.S. still today.

About the author

Niloufar Lily is a literary and crime fiction writer and poet. Her poems have been published in literary magazines, such as Strange Horizons and Dissident Voices. Zulaikha is her debut novel.

Niloufar-Lily Soltani's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Zulaikha is an often suspenseful and always emotionally striking account of the inescapable reach of a violent history, and the grip that political realities have over personal truths." – Naben Ruthnum, author of Find You in The Dark and Your Life is Mine

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