Her first book,
The Blindfold Horse: Memoirs of a Persian Childhood. was published in 1988. It was highly praised, winning the
Yorkshire Post Prize, a prize from the Royal Society of Literature, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and the Grand Prix Littéraire de Elle. She describes how Persia was before the excesses of the last Shah led to his overthrow, with an Islamic way of life without dogmatism or fanaticism.
Her most recent book,
The Secret of Laughter (2005), is a collection of Persian fairytales from Iran’s oral tradition. Many had never previously been published in written form.
She promoted Persian culture and history, and was a commentator on relations between the West and the Islamic world. For twenty years until 2005, she was the London Editor of the American literary journal
The Paris Review.
Bibliography
- The Blindfold Horse: Memories of a Persian Childhood, William Heinemann Ltd, 1988, ISBN 978-0434308507; I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2004, ISBN 978-1850434016.
- Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan: Vol 2, with Isabella L. Bird, Virago Press Ltd, 1989, ISBN 978-1853810558.
- A Girl in Paris, William Heinemann Ltd, 1991, ISBN 978-0434308521; I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007, ISBN 978-1845113803.
- Looking Back: A Panoramic View of a Literary Age by the Grandes Dames of European Letters, with Anita Brookner, Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1992, ISBN 978-0945167303.
- Three Journeys in the Levant: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Starhaven, 2001, ISBN 978-0936315171.
- The Secret of Laughter: Magical Tales from Classical Persia, I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2005, ISBN 978-1850434276.