Book description
Ashley Dartnell's mother was a glamorous American, her father a
dashing Englishman, each trying to slough off their past and upgrade
to a more romantic and exotic present in Iran. As the story starts,
Ashley is eight years old and living in Tehran in the 1960s: the Shah
was in power, life for Westerners was rich and privileged. But somehow
it didn't all add up to a fairytale. There were bankruptcies and
prisons, betrayals and lovers, lies and evasions. And throughout it
all, Ashley's passionate and strong-willed mother, Genie. Stories of
mothers and daughters are some of the most compelling in contemporary
memoir, from The Liar's Club and The Glass Castle to
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Bad Blood.
Farangi Girl deserves to be in their company. It's an
honest and endlessly recognisable portrait of a mother by a daughter
who loved her (and was loved in return). Against this extraordinary
background, Ashley's journey into adulthood was more helter-skelter
than most and this portrait of a bewitching and endlessly inventive
mother is surprising and deeply moving.
Ashley Dartnell was born in 1960s Tehran to an American mother and an
English father. Educated in Tehran, she later graduated from Bryn Mawr
and earned her MBA from Harvard Business School. This is her first book.
Ashley lives in London with her husband and three children.
