Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book resonated with me in a way that I wasn't expecting it to at all. My mom is from Sweden and I grew up in southern California, so I've gone the majority of my life never knowing half of my family. In high school, we visited my mom's side of the family in Sweden, and I was filled with a lot of emotions about connecting with my culture and meeting all these people who knew me when I was a baby, but who I had never seen in my life. I could go on about what I felt and how that was for me, or I could tell you to read this book.
Darius is a deeply sympathetic and relatable protagonist, and his experiences in Iran almost mirrored mine one-to-one, all the way down to having trouble speaking to a grandfather who doesn't know much English. On top of that, this book read as a love letter to Iran, painting the country and its architecture and its holidays and its foods in a way I've never seen them portrayed before. I loved this book a lot.
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