As an Iranian kid in America, my greatest nightmare was being kidnapped back to Iran. For those of us who had endured the “morality police”, gruelling escapes and long asylum battles, Iran was the hell at the border of our new American lives, and later, when I met other Iranian Americans my age, I found that I wasn’t alone.
I Will Greet the Sun Again, Khashayar J Khabushani’s tender and gut-wrenching debut novel, is a tightly constructed three-act drama exploring the long-term impact when three brothers are kidnapped to their father’s Iran. Set mostly in a sun-beaten, crumbling Los Angeles apartment complex, the story grabbed me from the start, not just for its vivid characters who never stop trying, or its meticulously realised settings, but for the winking way it speaks to Iranian Americans of the author’s generation, with Persian words sprinkled liberally throughout.
