The Persians: A Novel

“It’s very funny, and it’s so unexpected. When I picked up the book, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t want to read any blurb or reviews, I just came to the work very clean. So I thought, when I picked this up, that it would be a historical novel about the Persians. I expected a different country, a different time, a different culture. But then this opens and it’s like the Kardashians of Aspen. It’s told from lots of different points of view, of women within this family. And it’s a book about who they are now, now they’ve lost their money, their clout. How can they negotiate America as immigrants—and not powerful immigrants either.” Read more...

The Best Novels: The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

Kit de Waal, Novelist