Foreigner

by Nahid Rachlin

"A rare, intimate look at Iranians. . . . I have read [this book] four times by now, and each time I have discovered new layers in it." ―Anne Tyler, New York Times Book Review "Nahid Rachlin has an intimate insider's knowledge of present-day everyday Iran ― of people and places, houses, streets, and families ― and she writes of them with a clarity of perception and style that makes them instantly recognizable and even homely and familiar to the reader." ― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala "Rachlin's prose carefully understates and suggests her heroine's awakening to a pervasive atmosphere of menace and sensuality; residue of a culture she thinks she has abandoned, but which continues to claim her." ― Bruce Allen, Chicago Tribune " Foreigner gently raises new as well as timeless questions about an unhappy woman's faith and freedom." ― The New Yorker "Conveys the texture of extended family, the stress of modernization, the strain of Moslem rigidity as well as the harmony of nature, of dust and carpets, fruits, sweets, tea, fine rice and gossip. Always gossip." ― Eden Lipson, "Special Edition," WNET/Thirteen

Genres: Fiction, Iran, Middle East, Womens

194 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1978

About the author

Books by Nahid Rachlin: nahidr@rcn.com
http://www.amazon.com/Nahid-
Nahid Rachlin went to Columbia University Writing 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-Penguin), THE HEART'S DESIRE (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, VEILS (City Lights). CROWD OF SORROWS, (Kindle Singles).

You can listen to my reading of three flash-fiction stories at https://soundcloud.com/roommagazine/t...

Her individual short stories have appeared in more than fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook, Shenandoah. One of her stories was adopted by Symphony Space, “Selected Shorts,” and was aired on NPR’s around the country and two stories were nominated for Pushcart Prize. Her work has received favorable reviews in major magazines and newspapers and translated into Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Dutch, German, Arabic, and Persian. She has been interviewed in NPR stations such as All Things Considered (Terry Gross), P&W magazine, Writers Chronicle. She has written reviews and essays for New York Times, Newsday, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Other grants and awards she has received include the Bennet Cerf Award, PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught creative writing at Barnard College, Yale University and at a wide variety of writers conferences, including Paris Writers Conference, Geneva Writers Conference, and Yale Writers Conference. She has been judge for several fiction awards and competitions, among them, Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction (2015) sponsored by AWP, Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award sponsored by Poets & Writers, Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize, University of Maryland, English Dept, Teichmann Fiction Prize, Barnard College, English Dept. For more please click on her website: website: http://www.nahidrachlin.com

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nov 29, 230pm ~~ After reading the author's memoir Persian Girls I wanted to explore her novels. Foreigner, published originally in 1978, was her first. The story deals with an Iranian woman who had gone to university in the United States, married, and stayed in that country rather than returning home after her studying days were over.

We meet Feri after those fourteen years away, returning to Iran and her family for a visit. What will she discover there? Will the life she was so eager to escape years before seem the same to her now? Will anything change in her life now that she is taking time to examine it more carefully?

This was a moving and many-layered story. Since I had read Persian Girls so recently, I could see the elements of the author's own life that were woven into this book. The power of relationships, the need to know who you are and what you yourself want out of life, the courage to listen to your heart while respecting the traditions of your native culture. These things and more fill the book with emotions that any woman can identify with.

I will be back with more Rachlin after a small 'palate cleansing' break with something very different. I am very much looking forward to my three other books by this author!

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every book I've read by Nahid Rachlin (and as one of her editors, I've even read a couple books yet to be published) transports me completely. I don't know if all these years of reading and editing and analyzing manuscripts has made it more difficult for me to be transported by fiction. Perhaps. But with Nahid Rachlin, I know that it's due to the sheer beauty of her prose, the coolness, the clarity of her craftsmanship, the understated emotions, and her spectacular eye for detail. The pomegranate trees, with fruit bursting on the branch to reveal jewel-like seeds. The gurgling waters of the joob. The fresh fruit in the bazaars piled high--glistening grapes, fresh dates, persimmons. Better than any other writer writing about Iran, or even any country in the region, Rachlin brings the everyday Iranian's experience to light--men and women. V.S. Naipul said of this book that it's brilliant because it's not overtly political--politics are not even mentioned--and that Rachlin's understated prose provides the more powerful political statement.

On the face of it, this is a story of a women in transition, pulled to her homeland at a time of personal flux. She's moved to the United States, where she has a successful career as a biologist and is married to an American man who seems distant, changeable, cold. She realizes, while visiting her father and his second wife, that her mother hadn't just disappeared, as he'd always told her. Instead, she'd left the family for another man. Feri, the main character, eventually finds her mother in another town, and it's this meeting that proves to be the catalyst for the rest of the novel.

But this is almost beside the point. It's rare to find a writer these days who writes "quietly"--who doesn't feel the need to cartwheel across the page, tap-dance through chapters, engage in a continual performance aimed at keeping the reader's interest. In Foreigner, and in all of Nahid Rachlin's other work, the deep sense of place (and a true sense of Iran) and the elegant portrayal of women, in particular, haunts your days and nights in the most pleasant way imaginable.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills) · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I read with trepidation thinking it might be like the movie Sally Fields did, Not Without My Daughter, but that thought quickly dissipated as I was drawn into a story that was so relatable. I could remember the frustration of dealing with an impossible bureaucracy. This book flows. I couldn't put it down. It was a real delight to discover Nahid Rachlin! I hope to read more of her books.

[Greta G. Hambsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an engaging and quick read. I found the main struggle to be about alienation and disappointment in relationships and work, with the clash of cultures exacerbating the protagonist's stress. Feri's decision was not surprising, as her need to resolve her childhood trauma was foundational to self-discovery and moving forward with her life.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of a westernized Iranian woman and how a trip back to Iran evokes such a powerful pull on her that it is as if she had never left.
This was so evocative that I fully identified with the woman and understood her state of mind and her ultimate choice.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

An Iranian woman Feri returns back home to visit her family after a fourteen year absence - she has made a new life for herself in the US where she attended college/graduate school and married an American. She is initially in a state of reverse culture shock to be back in her native land and starts to pursue returning back to the US early but events outside her control cause her to remain. She appears to be a woman who oscillates between two worlds and initially doesn't quite fit in either. This novella is a depiction of her internal dilemna and her various interactions with family/friends. While it is a pleasant portrayal of modern Iranian culture, the story felt a bit flat to me as there was no empathy towards the protagonist and the details of various side stories are never fully elucidated. Very quick read but unsatisfying to this reader.

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

I flew through this short read and overall was not very impressed with the character development. Perhaps because it was a novella, the author intentionally didn't spend too much time on the details. There were a few moments in the story where the author almost too casually mentions events that are jarring and require more explanation (for example, the reason for the awkward relationship between Feri and her brother or the moments of distance between Tony and her).

Overall, I think the story just needed more development. I had a hard time empathizing with any of the characters and wasn't very invested in the fate of any of them.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This narrative is compelling and I read the book several times. We tend to think of Iranian women's lives as more limited than western womens' and in many ways they are, especially since the Khomeini regime. This book precedes that time however, so the protagonist, who returns to visit family after living in the U.S., has more options and returns to a society that has not reverted to such harsh fundamentalism though it is indeed sexist. Because the differences are not so stark in this story, we can contrast Iranian and American cultural attitudes without dealing with such drastically reduced women's rights. We see more clearly the ways in which our own society is not so great when the character's husband comes to fetch her back to the U.S. He is prim and unfeeling compared to her and the Iranians we meet through this book, which is rich in sensual detail. This book was well-written and evocative, but a later book I read by Rachlin disappointed, and made me wonder if Foreigner's editor shouldn't get a lot of credit for this one.

[Beatrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book but then I have yet to read a book by Nahid Rachlin that I do not love.

[Ladyce West · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than about Iranians and their customs, or the constrasts between Feri's American and Iranian parameters, this book is about a complex psychological discovery -- the acceptance of self. I read it twice because the story haunted me, not unlike the way Iran haunts Feri. The bonus comes from a portrayal of Iran from the inside, a knowledge precious to me an arm chair traveller. This is a thoughtful, extremely concise and well written book, introspective and beautiful. A quiet adventure.

[Chuck Heikkinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Iran-born biologist visits her family in Iran after many years of absence. The plight of women in a slow-to-change male-dominated society comes under scrutiny, as she searches for her mother, long-divorced from her father. In the process she questions her marriage to an American and her work, and struggles with the dilemma of not being able to get an exit visa to return to the US without written permission from her husband.

[Ruby Emam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book and a pleasure to read. I love this story and I regret that I met Nahid only recently on Goodreads, we could have been old friends by now...

FOREIGNER describes what most of the world population has been through, as human beings have always migrated since the dawn of civilization and will continue to do so. The clash of cultures and the problems of adaptation are well described in this book. The Islamic regime prides itself in having pushed the country back for centuries and to the dawn of Islam, but when I read about the end of the previous deposed Shah's regime, I msut congratulate Nahid for her honest account of a regime that always claimed to have taken Iran up to the same level as the civilized countries...

I loved this beautiful and so very meaningful sentence which I quote: "A moslim priest came out, looked past the beggar and spat on the ground..." Such an amazing observation.

[Cyrusmoqtaderi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first look into N. Rachlin's novels and I found myself quite caught up in the book. It's a short book and the story tends to pull the reader along so as to make it a quick read. I found the story much simpler than her more recent novel, Jumping Over Fire, and with less depth. There was more emphasis on the movement of the story as opposed to details about the places the characters visited or deeper inquiry into the day to day lives of each character. However, this did not detract from the book at all, rather it gives the novel a quicker pace (well suited to the main character's search and the theme of discovery that is central to the story).

Very interesting to read this personally, being someone with strong Iranian heritage, but has never visited the country. I did think that some aspects of the story were a bit predictable, but enjoyable none the less. A great read, and an excellent "first read" if you haven't yet tried any of Rachlin's novels.

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

i must admit i picked this book because it was short but i think that that was the problem– it was TOO short! Again, beautifully written but i found it to be way too rushed and i never did feel much for the main character (Fari– an Iranian woman who had moved to America and returns home for a visit and “finds” herself). I wanted to know more but then the book ended. Rachlin’s Persian Girls is a way better read if you want to read about life for women in Iran.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evocative and quite beautifully written. The narrator is sleep-walking through her life for most of the novel, and there is a dreamlike quality to the author's writing. I just wish there hadn't been the good-mother, weak-father, cold-stepmother family set-up; it felt a little clichéd. I learned a lot about Iranian culture through reading this novel.

[K M · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Iranian woman who was educated in the US, and who has married an American, travels back to Iran to visit her family after a 14 year absence.

The first time I read this, I read from cover to cover in one sitting. I found it very engaging and at times painfully touching. It is quite short- I think I will read it again one day.

[Saïdeh Pakravan · Rating 2 out of 5]

For decades now, Nahid Rachlin has been tirelessly reliving her Persian origins through a series of highly readable novels. Foreigner is one of her best, a close and nostalgic look at a rich tapestry of family and Muslim tradition up against a changing world.

[Ivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The protagonist's choice in the end is surprising and courageous. I sympathized. Maybe you CAN go home again...?

[Babak Fakhamzadeh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel was written in 1978 and is set in pre-revolution Iran.

[Namrata · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has very beautifully handled the sensibilities of the protagonist in the novel.
I enjoyed reading the book.

[Noura A. Rahman · Rating 3 out of 5]

a glimpse of how is/was it like to be a woman living in Iran, mainly in the suburbs.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I'd read it when it first came out. It might have hastened my understanding of women and islam. A clear, tough, well crafted book about the challenge of living outside one's culture.

[Mister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant.

[Leslie S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Foreigner: A Novel” (1978) is about an Iranian-American woman who lives in Massachusetts, and who has not traveled to Iran in 14 years. When she decides to visit her home country, she feels like a foreigner. During her stay, she learns about her past, reconnects with her roots, and grows frustrated with many aspects her country, although she also finds moments of peace and comfort.

This novel was written by Nahid Rachlin, an Iranian-American writer. Although the book was published during the Iranian Revolution (or Islamic Revolution), it doesn’t make reference to this historical event; rather, it describes the ins and outs of daily life from the point of view of Feri, the protagonist.

The author shares several characteristics with the protagonist, for example, they were both born in Iran, they both studied in the USA, they both spent over a decade without traveling to their hometown, and they’re both married to an American man who is an academic… therefore, this book feels very personal and honest (almost autobiographical). I really enjoyed this book.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an unusual book that felt like a memoir because the writing was not more developed. It was interesting to learn a bit about Iranian culture, especially as it pertains to women, but the protagonist was confusing at times as she oscillated between her desire for her childhood culture and that of the US where she was a successful biologist married to an American. It seems that her real desire was to find her mother and fill the loss of her childhood. She was extremely thoughless of her father, who made many sacrifices to raise her and send her to the US for an education after her mother left them for another man. The ending came crashing down and was jumped so far ahead that it felt disjointed from the rest of the book. It was pretty short, so there would have been plenty of time for her to develop the story and the characters more. Also, since it was written in 1978, the claim of it being current Iran in the summary is a bit misleading.

[berkan berghahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Foreigner" automatically throws the reader into Feri's visit to Iran, the country she was born in but left to study and work in America. During her stay, she embarks on yet another journey: The one to her past memories, being the one who reflects and the one who is reflected by her family members and old friends. The beauty of Nahid's writing is that the illustrations and sensations that Feri is feeling about Iran feel enstranged in the beginning. She knows these places but it's unfamiliar, she sounds unhappy with being there and I got the impression that the descriptions leave a bad taste. Yet, following the novel, her descriptions become more beautiful, nostalgic drops fill a cup and we as a reader drink out of it and are caught by it, too. Being drawn between two cultures is something I also feel, especially when visiting Türkiye/ Turkey.
I have read Rachlin's memoir "Persian Girls" which, I feel, invokes a different reading experience.

[The Contented · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

So what I noticed about this book was that it had been ‘withdrawn’ from the Royal Oak library in Michigan in October 2001, which got me thinking about what had provoked its removal from the library.

There’s a picture of a veiled woman on the cover, but that has nothing much to do with the story.

It’s much more a study of dysfunctional relationships, with a surprising number of characters who could easily be NPD caricatures in their own right.

It’s about a woman’s awakening and a realisation of what is right for her.

It was first published in 1977 and is set in a very different Iran to the one I’ve read about in other books.

This was a very easy to get into novel, at a time when work in inundated with non-fiction reading. So a good break in that sense. My reading had become quite stuck otherwise. Good to actually progress a book to the end. Effortlessly, in one day.

[Sree · Rating 3 out of 5]

What was that? I loved the first half with all that claustrophobic suffocating feeling we feel alongside Feri who feels like a stranger within her native place. That much I can relate.
Then the second half is all about her somehow feeling less stressed and more at ease among all these things, all the jarring little flashbacks in the first half amounting to nothing, and suddenly we see a woman who is all about wanting to stay back and live the "life she is meant to live". It got frustrating as the story went forward. What was it all supposed to mean? That home is the best place in the world? That she is just like her mother?
The writing is great but the plot is frustrating to say the least.

[Lindsay Zombek · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This story follows a woman born in Iran, who had moved to the United States, who returns to Iran. The story looks at the cultural differences of the two countries, but more so tells the story of the woman as she tries to figure out who she is, what makes her happy, and where she belongs. It’s a very short book— Since I read it through Kindle, was actually stunned when I turned the page and found out it was over. There is a lot left unanswered and a lot of story that still could have been told. Yet, I am okay with where it ended. This wasn’t read for a book club, but is a book that I would have loved to discuss with others.

[Adam Johns · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written, tricky little novel. It's elliptical and understated. The narrator struggles to know herself, and is hard for other characters to understand. The novel begins with the narrator's return to visit her family in Iran after a long absence - she has come to see Iran but also America through foreign eyes. We catch glimpses of poverty, sexual violence, oppression of women, and the magnetic pull of home & of a different (less commercial, for one thing) way of life in spite of all those terrible things. I was deeply impressed by this book and will read other books by her.