Das Paradies meines Nachbarn

Ingeborg Bachmann Prize Winner 2021

Born in Tehran, author Nava Ebrahimi tells stories of sons and their mothers, of uprooting and division, of the fractures in life. A moving novel by one of the most exciting contemporary writers in the German language.

“Hello, this is Ali-Reza writing. I knew your mother well and have a letter that I need to deliver to you. It’s important. For you at least as much as for me.” Ali Najjar hails from Tehran and believes he has left his past far behind. As a child soldier, he experienced the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War but managed to save his own skin. Later, with his attitude of “I was at the front, I know no fear,” he climbs the career ladder as a product designer in Germany. Iran, Tehran, and his family have become a foreign world to him. Then he receives a message from a stranger. A friend of his deceased mother from Tehran asks to meet him on neutral ground. Ali Najjar sends his colleague Sina, a half-Iranian who is facing a professional and personal crisis, in his place to the Persian Gulf. He himself avoids the encounter. For good reason.