Her Name Was Samira

The one constant throughout the protagonist’s development toward some sort of independent personality is her ambivalent relationship with her tailor husband, Ebbie. (A cheating chauvinist not beyond reform.) Author Sholevar portrays their domestic life in modern Iran, on the cusp of the Shah’s overthrow, with nuanced subtlety, wry humor, and a colorful sense of both the grotesque and mundane. Complicated by wealthy benevolent patrons and nefarious gangster-like neighbors (who can’t abide the thought of an enlightened woman), all tangled up with the happenstance of Samira’s own infidelity, the arc and scope of this story is ambitious—as is this first novel, in general, by poet Sholevar.

William Burrison, English teacher, playwright, and poet

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