Books by Sanam Mahloudji
“It’s set in contemporary America. Or that’s where it begins, but it is dealing with the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. You have a family now based in America, but the ripples of what happened in the 1970s are still being felt through their family. There are a lot of strong women in this book. They live the high life. But there are lots of fractured family dynamics, which is always a rich source of humour. And sharp dialogue, the repartee between them. It’s a family situation that goes badly wrong, with all of this history woven through it. So, again, it’s interesting because it deals with serious politics, a family who were significant in Iran, and who are now trying to recover that sense of whether or not they matter in contemporary America. But it’s the characters you get most involved with.” Read more...
Stephanie Merritt, Journalist
Interviews where books by Sanam Mahloudji were recommended
The Funniest Books of 2025, recommended by Stephanie Merritt
Every year, the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction draw up a shortlist of books that made them laugh out loud. We asked the novelist Stephanie Merritt, one of the 2025 judges, to talk us through the eight books in the running for the title of the funniest book of the year.
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1
What We Can Know: A Novel
by Ian McEwan -
2
We Do Not Part
by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris -
3
Flashlight: A Novel
by Susan Choi -
4
The Life of Violet
by Virginia Woolf -
5
Dream Count
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -
6
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi
New Literary Fiction
New Literary Fiction
Keep up to date with the best new releases in literary fiction here on Five Books. Our deputy editor, Cal Flyn, an award-winning author herself, writes seasonal round-ups of the best new novels from ‘literary’ writers: from buzzed-about debuts to critics’ darlings, new work from the globally recognised greats and beloved sleeper hits from writers’ writers. We love it all here at Five Books.
The Best Novels: The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, recommended by Kit de Waal
The 2025 shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction features a family saga about formerly rich Iranian refugees, a surprisingly funny tale of ISIS brides and a “weird” midlife crisis adventure in suburban California. We asked the bestselling novelist—chair of this year’s judging panel—to talk us through the six finalists.
