Nahid Rachlin

Nahid Rachlin (born 1944) is an Iranian-American novelist and short story writer.[1][2][3] She has been called "perhaps the most published Iranian author in the United States".[4]

Life

Nahid Rachlin was born June 6, 1944 in Abadan, Iran.[5] Her father Manoochehr Bozorgmehri was a circuit judge, and her mother Mohtaram Bozorgmehri had ten children. Brought up by an aunt until she was nine years old, she then lived with her parents, who were emotionally distant, under the shadow of restrictive gender expectations. Her closest family relationship was with an older sister, Pari. Pari underwent arranged marriage to a physically abusive older man, and then lost access to her son after she sued for divorce. Pari remarried, but suffered episodes of mental breakdown for which she was institutionalised, and died young after a home accident.[3]

In 1962, aged 17, Rachlin emigrated to the United States, gaining a BA at Lindenwood College. She married Howard Rachlin, a psychology professor, and in 1969 became a naturalized US citizen.[2] In the early 1970s she pursued graduate study in creative writing, writing short stories for a class with Richard Humphries at Columbia University, and for a class with Donald Barthelme at City College of New York. These stories won her the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 1976 Rachlin returned to Iran for the first time in twelve years, drawing on the experience for her debut novel Foreigner.[3]

Works
  • Foreigner. New York: Norton, 1978.[6]
  • Married to a stranger. New York : Dutton, 1983.[7][8][9][10][11]
  • Veils: short stories. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1992.[12][13][14][15][16]
  • The heart's desire: a novel. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995.[17][18]
  • Jumping over fire. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2005.[19][20][21][22][23]
  • Persian girls: a memoir. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2006.[24]
  • A way home: stories. Edmonds, Washington: Ravenna Press, 2018.

References
  1. Fister, Barbara (1995). "Rachlin, Nahid". Third World Women's Literatures: A Dictionary and Guide to Materials in English. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-313-28988-0.
  2. Robert D. Sturr (2003). "Nachlin Rachlin (1947–)". In Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel (ed.). Asian American Short Story Writers: An A-to-Z Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 257–262. ISBN 978-0-313-32229-7.
  3. Maya Sharma (2000). "Nahid Rachlin". In Emmanuel Sampath Nelson (ed.). Asian American Novelists: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 296–. ISBN 978-0-313-30911-3.
  4. Nahid Rachlin, Contemporary Authors. Online at encyclopedia.com. Accessed September 1, 2020.
  5. Bahareh H. Lampert (2008). Voices of New American Women: Visions of Home in the Middle Eastern Diasporic Imagination. University of Wisconsin--Madison. p. 60.
  6. Reviewed by Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review, February 18, 1979, p.3.
  7. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, July 22, 1983, p.118
  8. Reviewed by Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1983, p.20.
  9. Reviewed by Barbara Thompson, The New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1983, p.14.
  10. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, May 31, 1993, p.47
  11. Reviewed by Saïdeh Pakravan, Belles Lettres, Spring 1994, p.53
  12. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, April 20, 1992, p.19.
  13. Reviewed by Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 20, 1992, p.18.
  14. Reviewed by Marilyn Booth, Belles Lettres, Fall, 1992, p.52.
  15. Reviewed by Laurel Graeber, The New York Times Book Review, November 29, 1992, p.18.
  16. Reviewed by Carolyne Wright, Harvard Review, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 1993), p.1-2.
  17. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, October 2, 1995, p.66.
  18. Reviewed by Nasrin Rahimieh, World Literature Today, Spring 1996, p.463.
  19. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, January 23, 2006, p.186.
  20. Reviewed by Donna Chavez, Booklist, March 1, 2006, p.67
  21. Reviewed by Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times, July 21, 2006, p.137.
  22. Reviewed by Christine C. Menefee, School Library Journal, August 2006, p.145.
  23. Reviewed by Aména Moïnfar, MELUS, Summer 2008, p.181
  24. Reviewed, Publishers Weekly, August 7, 2006, p.45.

Further reading
  • Thomas Filbin (Fall 1996). "The Expatriate Memory: Four Iranian Writers in America". Literary Review. 40 (1): 172–177.
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