The Heart's Desire [Paperback]

Nahid Rachlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

"Jennifer Sahary, an American artist, and her husband Karim, a professor and Iranian immigrant, make an extended visit to Teheran shortly after the Iran-Iraq War, encountering unforeseen dangers and sexual temptations that change the course of their lives.

When their young son is taken by his grandmother to the holy city of Qom without Jennifer’s knowledge, she sets out to find him, learning much about Iran and about herself along the way. And as Karim renews contact with his family and surveys the misery and needs of his war-torn country, he begins to question where he can best achieve his ideals.

In sensuous and elegant prose, Rachlin weaves the interlinking stories of a man and a woman and their contrasting cultures with balance and sympathy.

Nahid Rachlin is an Iranian who lives in New York City, where she teaches creative writing at Barnard College. She is author of Veils: Short Stories and Married to a Stranger (both published by City Lights) and Foreigner (W. W. Norton).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rachlin (Veils) tries not to judge anyone in this story of an American woman married to an Iranian man?tact that may be admirable in life but that makes for a somewhat bland novel. Artist Jennifer and professor Karim leave their comfortable home in Athens, Ohio, with their six-year-old son, Darius, to visit Karim's family shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq war. An accomplished Farsi speaker, Jennifer remains intrigued by Teheran on her second visit but finds it much changed, with an anti-Americanism that makes her uncomfortable. At the same time, Karim's recollections of growing anti-Iranian feeling in the United States are weighing on him. Jennifer's and Karim's relationship has been strained of late anyway, as after 12 years together, he seems to be rediscovering his ethnicity. While in Iran he gets word that his department head back home has given away one of his courses, and he begins to toy with the idea of remaining in Iran. Trouble erupts when Karim leaves on a short trip with his uncle and Karim's mother kidnaps Darius in order to enroll him in religious school. One can learn a lot from this novel, but while these observations are interesting, many (particularly on Jennifer's part) have the feel of pedagogical exposition rather than narrative necessity.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Nahid Rachlin is the Iranian-American author of four novels, short stories, and essays. She teaches at New School University and the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y, New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 198 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers; F edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863050
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863057
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,880,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

BRIEF BIO http://www.nahidrachlin.com

Nahid Rachlin attended Columbia University MFA program on a Doubleday-Columbia Fellowship and then went on to Stanford University MFA program on a Stegner Fellowship. Her publications include a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS (Penguin), four novels, JUMPING OVER FIRE (City Lights), FOREIGNER (W.W. Norton), MARRIED TO A STRANGER (E.P.Dutton), THE HEART'S DESIRE (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, VEILS (City Lights). Her individual stories have appeared in about fifty magazines. One of her stories was produced by Symphony Space, "Selected Shorts" and was aired on NPR radio stations around the country.
Her work has received favorable reviews in major magazines and newspapers and translated into Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, and Farsi. She has written reviews and essays for New York Times, Newsday, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. She received many awards, including the Bennet Cerf Award, PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
She has been interviewed in magazines such as Poets & Writers and AWP Writers Chronicle, and TV such as Channel 13, and on NPR's such as Fresh Air, Terry Gross, All Things Considered.
Read a recent review of PERSIAN GIRLS: http://www.brooklyntoday.info/features/465-persian-girls.html

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is this for real?, November 15, 2000

By 

Layla Sabourian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart's Desire (Paperback)

I would have expected a lot more from an Iranian writer. I feel that Americans in general have such a wrong view of Iran that we do not need books such as this to prove every negetive sterotype correct. Although I do belive that any of these events could have happened in the course of someone's life time, I really find it hard to belive that they could happen to someone in one single trip. It feels to me as if Nahid Rachlin knows what the American Press wants to hear, and writes exactly that. It helps her get published, but it certainly does not paint a true image of Iran.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Without My Daughter #2, May 10, 2000

By 

Babak M (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart's Desire (Paperback)

It seems like anything that could possibly go wrong for this woman did go wrong. In the few months that this chracter lived in Iran she confronted all those things that people always hear about happening to someone else somewhere in Iran, but never actually witness. I lived in Iran for four years during the most "terrible times." I did not see any woman's hair being cut in public, nor was I hit by a stray Iraqi missile. Further, for whatever personal reasons, it seems like the author has an extreme dislike for Iranian men. In short, I would not recommend this book for the simple reason that it does not reflect

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars two thumbs down, July 31, 2000

By 

Nasrin Vahidi "marcia marcia" (San diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart's Desire (Paperback)

I don't know why this book was written. The accounts in this book are grossly exaggerated, the narrative is uncoherent, the language is mostly flat, the description is unexiting and altogether I give it thumbs down. I am sorry that even we see ourselves thru the eyes of outsiders. I've lived thru the revolution and the war in Iran and never have seen any woman's hair be cut by pasdars. We have a lot of traditional older women in Iran and I've met a lot of them myself but what Karym's mother does is unheard of. Uncle Jamshid is another big flaw. Very few people go prostitude hunting with their uncles. The relationships between a father or an uncle with son or nephew are very formal and distant. Altogether I can say I expected a lot more from Ms. Rachlin than this worthless piece of work that is more expected from some outsider with a blinding bias.