This paper will discuss the representation of post-Revolutionary Iran in post-9/11 novels and memoirs by women of the Iranian diaspora in the United Sates, with a focus on Nahid Rachlin's Persian Girls and Dalia Sofer's Septembers of Shiraz. Since 2001, prominent Western publishers have published a large number of historical novels and memoirs by diasporic Iranian women. Many of these narratives are set in the period before, during and after the Islamic Revolution with the aim of recording the socio-cultural changes brought about by the Revolution. As the products of a time and place characterized by an unprecedented curiosity regarding Islam and Iran, some of these works have attracted wide public attention and have established their authors as iconic figures. Due to the increasing role of these narratives in shaping the Western audiences' view of Iranian culture and defining the cultural identity of Iranian immigrants, there has been a debate among Iranian scholars, especially Iranian-Americans, on how genuine and disinterested these allegedly historical representations are. In this study an attempt will be made to delineate the conditions surrounding the production and reception of post-9/11 Iranian-American literature—especially the dominance of memoir and historical fiction—and to discuss the approaches to the representation of contemporary Iran in these narratives. The analysis of the case studies will show how in many of these works history is reshaped to support certain socio-political commentaries and neo-orientalist dictums.
