First published 2020
Khosrou stands before his middle school class in Oklahoma, ready to share his story. His classmates see only a dark-skinned boy with strange lunch smells who makes up wild tales. They dismiss him as a liar who talks too much about inappropriate things. But Khosrou's stories reach across generations and continents. He tells of fleeing Iran with his mother and sister under cover of darkness. He recounts family legends from Isfahan, where ancestors lived among jasmine-scented streets and royal palaces. His tales feature relatives who wept over exquisite pastries and touched carpets embedded with gems. Between dodging paper clips and spitballs on the school bus, Khosrou fights for something vital. Like Scheherazade spinning stories to survive, he battles to make his truth heard in a classroom that refuses to listen.
Genres: literary-fiction, family-life, coming-of-age, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Iran, Isfahan, Oklahoma
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
356 pages · Kindle Edition · Levine Querido