India, Feb. 7 -- Your novel spans four generations of an Iranian family from the 1979 revolution to present-day Germany. What drew you to tell this multigenerational story, and how did you approach representing such a vast historical sweep?

Above all, I wanted to learn more about this topic myself. My parents were politically persecuted - first by the Shah and then by the Islamic regime - which is why they had to flee Iran a year before I was born. But that was all I knew. The details of how they became politicised, when they realised they had to flee and what their fears and hopes were, were not part of our family stories. So, I used my work on the novel as an opportunity to interview my parents and ask all the questions you don't norma...