Podcast
Dalia Sofer will read from the novels The Septembers of Shiraz—which chronicles the unraveling and eventual departure of a man wrongly imprisoned in Tehran in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution—and The Soundman of Tehran, a work-in-progress, about a man contending with a fraught past: his early years in Tehran’s dilapidated Jewish quarter, his misguided youth in France, and his eventual return with his young son to the city of his birth. The protagonists of these two novels have contrasting trajectories: one chooses to leave, the other chooses to return. Followed by a conversation with Saba Soomekh, Associate Director of Research at the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
Photo: Anthony Rhoades
About the Speaker: Dalia Sofer is the author of the novel The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco Press), which was selected as a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” was a finalist for the Jewish Book Award, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and has been translated and published in 16 countries, including France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, and the UK.
Dalia is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Sirenland Fellowship, and the Sami Rohr Choice Award, and has contributed essays and reviews to various publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Review of Books, and The Believer.
Born in Tehran, Iran, Dalia moved at the age of eleven to New York, where she attended the Lycée Français de New York, and later, New York University. She received an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and has twice been a resident at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, and at the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Italy. She lives in New York City.
Sponsored by the
UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies
