(...) It has also proved to me how ridiculous the phrase “women’s writing” is. The books I’ve read have been wildly, delightfully different in both style and substance, zigzagging from a surreal Chinese short-story collection to a Mexican gothic novella to an epic Polish “constellation novel” and so on. My favourite so far? Disoriental by the Iranian author Négar Djavadi (translated by Tina Kover), a mesmeric debut novel in which a daughter of Iranian dissidents records her family history from a Paris fertility clinic waiting room. (...)
