Disoriental, by Iranian author Négar Djavadi and translated by Tina Kover, is an award-winning multigenerational novel that winds together the history of Iran with questions of identity and belonging as the protagonist builds a life in modern Paris. Djavadi skilfully tells the story through vignettes which, like memories, come in nonlinear waves. As she proceeds to “disorientalise” and detach herself from family tradition, she feels her sense of otherness in the west.
