Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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More (Magical) Real Than The Regime

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar

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  I’ve been thinking a lot about why I appreciate magical realism but fantasy does nothing for me. For me, it reaches truths that fantasy (and other genres) can’t quite grasp. It gives a voice to othered writers, be they minority writers or from the Global South, or more often than not, both. In the hands of a skilled writer, it can express deep emotions like grief, love, and those invisible bonds that link us across generations. It can feel like a folkloric tale, touching […]

Do We Ever Really Know Our Parents?

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

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It sometimes feels likes a writer has used their work of fiction as a cathartic exorcism of their demons. The Nights are Quiet in Tehran feels like Shida Bazyar is laying bare parts of her own upbringing as the child of political refugees from Iran living in Germany. This gives the book a warmer, more personal touch than might have been achieved by another.   This book plays with form, switching 4 times between time periods and narrators as we follow the lives of Behzad, […]

An account of life

I Won't Pretend These Missiles Are Stars: Life in Iran During the 12-Day War by Tehran's Cartoonist Collective / The Cartoonist Collective

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The short stories inside of I Won’t Pretend These Missiles Are Stars by Tehran’s Cartoonist Collective deal with the weeks of war between Israel and Iran. Set in Iran, each of the people giving their story has a different way of dealing or not dealing with the events around them. Some worry about the big picture (death), others worry that they never got to wear the special outfit to their presentation. Each author has a unique way of showing what was and wasn’t important to […]

The littlest (quietest) revolutionary

The One & Only Googoosh: Iran's Beloved Superstar by Azadeh Westergaard

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Azadeh Westergaard’s The One & Only Googoosh: Iran’s Beloved Superstar is an interesting biographical book about a performer of Iran who is probably not well known to the general public. Even though she did a concert in the 2000’s I had never heard of her. But then again, I am not familiar with many international performers. But also, maybe her decades long forced silence in her homeland of Iran had something to do with it (and the fact that the concert mentioned in Westergaard’s book […]

An Emotional, Vital Story

Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian

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I don’t know that I know how to talk about this book except that GOSH it’s amazing and good and powerful and I am so glad it exists and I can’t wait for more people to have the chance to read it! At its core, Only This Beautiful Moment is a story of family and community, of fighting for your beliefs and also learning who you are and want to be. Told across three generations, Moud, Saeed, and Bobby are each discovering their history and […]

We all find refuge any place we can.

Refuge by Dina Nayeri

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Refuge is, appropriately, about the places we seek refuge: partnerships, houses, families, communities, meals, spaces.  The narrative is mostly about Niloo, a young Iranian-American who emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and brother in the 80s.  Niloo’s father, a dentist with a proclivity for opium, remained in Iran.  Niloo is now a 30 year old living in Amsterdam and married to a French dude who by all accounts adores her, and her father is divorcing his third wife and apparently interested in rekindling some […]



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