Client Chat with Porochista Khakpour
A Client Chat with Porochista Khakpour
Shipman Agency staffer Kira Tucker sat down with Porochista Khakpour to talk about her latest hit novel, Tehrangeles, a tragicomic satire about a family of Iranian-American multimillionaires confronting fame, hidden truths, and self-acceptance in the midst of it all. Read below to learn more about her latest work—out from Penguin Random House this Tuesday, June 11th.
Kira: Why did you choose the mode of satire to write about the experience(s) of being Iranian American?
Porochista: Well, I’ve written about the Iranian-American experience from various angles over the course of several books. My first novel featured a family not unlike my own growing up—it was a sort of coming-of-age realist novel. My second book chose to look at Iranian-American experience through a sort of fabulist experiment, merging ancient Persian mythology with American current events.
Then I had two nonfiction books, one about illness and the other a collection of my Iranian American essays, so Tehrangeles as a wholly satiric project is a bit of a new direction. Even though I’d argue satire is always present in my work—or certainly dark humor, which is very Iranian actually. Tehrangeles has been with me for a while; I started it ages ago and worked on it while Books 2-4 were in the works, and aspects through various drafts. But it was always a comedy about the Tehrangeles one-percent. I grew up only adjacent to that culture—these are not my kind of Iranian-Americans, to be clear—not my family or friends—but they were very present around me. And since satire feels very comfortable for me, the main challenge here was to make sure the satire was not empty and flat and easy, and that there was also room for warmth, empathy, and even some redemption ultimately.
KT: From being a ghostwriter for a reality star to becoming a TikTok devotee—can you share more about your research process for getting into the minds of your characters?
PK: Not all of the research here was intentional but given that I’ve been working on this on and off since 2011, it was interesting how often I found myself in situations where I realized “this could be a great opportunity for Tehrangeles research!” In a way, I tried to make the best of the awfulness of the pandemic that way. I was in a deep funk like everyone, and lost several friends to COVID-19, and I was horrified by so much of the American response. So I was in Queens—at one point the hardest hit place in the country—watching the superspreader parties by influencers on social media and witnessing celebrities say some pretty awful things online, and it occurred to me that this startling moment could be my setting. I spent a lot of time on TikTok, for example, pretty much every single day. And I kept a lot of notes and then rewrote the book several times, but always in real time. I don’t really recommend this process, as it was quite frustrating, but in the end I really wanted an early pandemic period piece (just the first half of 2020 really) that would feel authentic as my setting. The characters I knew pretty well—most of them had come to me as is in 2011, when I first conceived of it—but it was the world they were in that I needed to understand better. And so I chose a world they shared with me—I couldn’t relate to affluence but I could relate to the crisis.
Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians, described Tehrangeles as “like Little Women on an ayahuasca trip.” Did you have just as much fun writing it as we did reading?
Ha, no! See above. Much of it was exhausting and I often wanted to give up. I also had to do some awful kinds of research, like looking deeply into MAGA conspiracy sites and such for one character, so it felt excruciating at times. But there is a big party scene in this book that’s pretty central and that was a blast for me, because I could just raise the stakes so much to the point of pushing the realism into surrealism—now that was fun! That was when I realized I really wanted to write a story that people could have a lot of fun with, even while dealing with extremely serious and disturbing issues.
What’s the story behind the book’s cover art?
I love talking about this! The Persian cat was a request of mine after Pantheon showed me some covers that were really beautiful but not quite right to me. They featured a woman’s face as the main image and for some reason, I never like those. I prefer for readers to imagine characters in their own head, without the cover art doing it for them; I like to avoid those literal representations. But a cat? Now that’s a whole other story.
I love the campiness of Persian cat imagery for Iranians. It’s a thing. We even often point out the country of Iran is shaped like a Persian cat. And without giving too much away, Pari the Persian cat in the book feels like a god of this universe for me in a way. A higher power! Pari is so important to me. Anyway, I am just so glad my editor and the designer agreed to try this! I was sure they’d say no, but I had to try! Luckily it was a hit and the cover is getting so much love. Philip Pascuzzo is so talented.
Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. She is the critically acclaimed author of three novels, a memoir, and a collection of essays. She lives in New York City with her beloved partner and a wildchild rescue puppy named Canelo.
You can pre-order Tehrangeles here and hear more from Porochista on Iranian-American narratives in her recent feature in the Los Angeles Times.