A Brief Conversation with Laleh Khadivi

Abstract

January–February 2012 | 7 photo : ariel zambelich WLT: What recent book has captured your interest? Laleh Khadivi: W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolaño call to me again and again. Their work dissolves the membrane between the events of history and the emotional core of our modern lives. They seem to converse with me, from their thoughts to the page to my ear. This relaxed narrative form, at once personal and constructed, opens the doors of time such that at one moment we are together in the present of the story and also behind that present moment, with all the history and circumstance and drama that made the moment. They strike me as incredibly intuitive writers able to honor both the story they want to write as well as the story that wants to be written. In the case of Rings of Saturn or Austerlitz or Last Evenings on Earth, an entire history of violence courses behind mundane episodes of life. Violence is so often depicted in literature somewhere at the extremes of a spectrum that ranges from blunt to hysterical, and Bolaño and Sebald build books like houses, structuring an edifice of window frames and doorknobs all in service to the ghosts that will eventually wander the halls when no one is home. Their works have, over the years, enchanted and terrorized me, and they continue to echo in my work like all insistent inspiration, in waves loud and soft. WLT: What outside of literature has recently captured your attention? Laleh Khadivi: Too much. Global sociopolitical instability. Climate change. The precise control of Alfred Hitchcock’s vision. Hummingbirds. New albums by P. J. Harvey and Björk. Everything by Leadbelly. The Kreutzer Sonata. Nonverbal communication. The expansive control of Terrance Malick’s vision. Lina Wertmüller. Human migration in the twenty-first century. Postnational identities in the twentyfirst century. Fluidity versus discipline. The obsession with longevity and youth. Silence versus sound. The constant truth that behind every face lies a universe of stories. Editorial note: To read more of our conversation with Laleh Khadivi, visit the WLT website. A novelist and filmmaker, Laleh Khadivi was born in Iran and immigrated to the United States after the Iranian Revolution. The Age of Orphans, her debut novel and the first in a trilogy, follows the lives of three generations of Kurdish men as they grapple with landlessness, migration, and national identity. She is a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and several fellowships. A Brief Conversation with Laleh Khadivi notebook ...