Caspian Rain Hardcover - 2015

Media reviews

“Nahai's alluring poetic style draws us into the lives of her female characters…captivating prose…a powerful testament to Iranian women's fight against oppression.”
—Ms. Magazine

“Nahai’s story of a haunted Jewish family in Tehran during the shah’s last years possesses the dark beauty and harsh lessons of a fairy tale…Nahai’s poetic and cathartic drama speaks for all silenced women, for all who are tyrannized.”
—Booklist STARRED review

“…both a riveting family drama and compelling historical fiction…The multiple ways Jews and Muslims intersect is also clearly presented, offering a fascinating glimpse into Persian life prior to the 1979 insurgency. Richly detailed, emotionally intense, and tremendously moving, this work is highly recommended.”
—Library Journal STARRED review

“In her stirring fourth novel, Nahai explores the struggles of an Iranian family in the tenuous decade before the Islamic revolution…a poignant tale of a ‘damaged family.’”
—Publishers Weekly

“Filled with hope and despair, Caspian Rain is Nahai's most emotional and inspiring novel yet. Nahai's heroine — the inspired and inspiring Yaas — learns the lessons of obedience, subservience, and forbearance, and then chooses a surprising and unexpected path.”
—Lisa See, author of Peony in Love and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“Unexpected and heartrending, but also witty, elegiac, sophisticated and edgy. Caspian Rain is a beautiful book.”
—Chris Abani, author of Graceland and The Virgin of Flames

“In Caspian Rain, Gina Nahai writes with subtlety and grace about the unappeasable forces of culture, class and family which shape the life of a young girl growing up in Jewish Tehran before the mullahs.”
—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black

“Caspian Rain once more proves Gina B. Nahai's ability to create through her wonderfully lyrical prose a fictional world that, while rooted in a particular culture and history, is universally relevant and appealing.”
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

Citations

• Booklist, 08/01/2007, Page 34
• Library Journal, 08/01/2007, Page 72
• New York Times Book Review, 10/28/2007, Page 24
• New Yorker (The), 10/08/2007, Page 95
• Publishers Weekly, 06/18/2007, Page 30