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Sandstone Press has bought a novel about a teenage girl who flees 1979 Tehran by the playwright Farnoosh Moshiri.
Robert Davidson at Sandstone Press acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada in the book, titled The Drum Tower, from Lorella Belli at the Lorella Belli Literary Agency.
Davidson said: “This most lyrical of novels speaks in the language of magic realism of Iran’s transition from monarchy to theocracy. Informed by the author’s own experience of oppression and escape it is imaginative, illuminating and deep. We will all hear more of Farnoosh Moshiri in the coming years.”
Belli commented: “Farnoosh is a wonderful writer whose work has already been published internationally and in US where she has won many awards. Her new novel will appeal to readers of Khaled Hosseini, Sahar Delijani’s Children of the Jacaranda Tree and Kader Abdolah’s The House of the Mosque.”
The Drum Tower is the tale of a teenage girl whose privileged life is turned upside down when she starts to unveil her family secrets and the political turmoil around her leads her to flee war-torn Tehran in 1979.
Moshiri was born in Tehran and trained as a playwright. She attended the University of Iowa's creative writing programme, then returned to Iran. When the Tehran authorities demanded that anyone associated with the theatre agree to write and produce only state-approved plays, Moshiri refused and went into hiding. She escaped to Afghanistan, then to India and to the United States, where she currently teaches at college and writes. Her previous works published in the US include The Crazy Dervish and The Pomegranate Tree (Black Heron Press) and Against Gravity (Penguin Books).
Sandstone Press will publish The Drum Tower in trade paperback and e-book on 16th October.