Nana Asfour

  • Women Under the Influence

    From the outset, Yaas, the young Jewish Iranian narrator of Gina Nahai’s novel Caspian Rain, is an unwelcome child. The first strike against her is that she is born a girl, and as everyone in her family knows, “there’s nothing but trouble and shame where girls are involved.” Her mother, Bahar, welcomes Yaas into the world with tears of despair, having hoped that the child would be a boy. Instead, she struggles to make do with a daughter. Bahar tries not to have too many expectations for Yaas but can’t help herself. She wants her to succeed where she herself has failed: at being female.

    It will