Description

Refined and full of suspense, Mahmood Falaki uses his new novel Deadly Strangers to address the current "stranger" issues and explore universal interpersonal complications of love and death.

"Where in Hamburg do you get rid of a corpse?” That is just one of many questions occupying the protagonist Nima, a 43-year-old Hamburg teacher. Everyone around him doesn't seem quite sane anymore. His buddy Heiko wants him to sleep with his wife. His friend Bardia, a penniless Iranian poet who has fled, becomes involved in drug stories and a murder case.

To escape this madness, he sets off on a journey to his country of origin, Iran. Nima has not set foot in the country since his parents fled for political reasons 33 years ago. It wasn't until spring 2017 that he decided to explore his roots, to trace his own identity. In Iran, he not only experiences a culture shock, but also corruption, oppression and the arbitrariness of the authorities. Through Nima's eyes, the reader also sees the true face of an authoritarian religious system that forces people to find strange ways to circumvent Islamic laws and avoid repression.

Against the background of the permanent integration process of a person with a migration background, the confrontation with German culture and the growing tendency in society towards right-wing populism since the year of the "refugee crisis" in 2015, Mahmood Falaki raises questions about cultural identity, friendship and the impassable in his new novel pursuit of personal happiness. With his lively, authentic descriptions, Falaki draws the reader into a world that often comes dangerously close to madness, while never losing his cool sense of humor despite his seriousness.

Reviews and press:

Tabula rasa magazine:

For Mahmood Falaki, who has lived in Germany since 1983, is the author of numerous novels, short stories and volumes of poetry, has a doctorate in literature and is the editor of Persian textbooks, being a stranger in a cultural landscape with which he is more than forty years familiar is associated with a supposedly fatal risk. TueThe vague influences of his cultural origins mix with feelings of existential insecurity, which is reflected in the use of a special colloquial language. (...) more

Fixpoetry:

Mahmood Falaki tells the story of two refugees from Iran. The teacher Nima came at the age of ten with his parents, who were fleeing the Islamic revolution in their home country. The poet Bardia, Nima's friend, hasn't been in Hamburg that long. While Nima whiles away the time with changing love affairs and doesn't give much thought to his origins, Bardia despairs more and more. His works were censored in Iran. He couldn't find a publisher in Germany because the readers weren't interested in Iranian poetry - and even with a novel he failed miserably. (...) more

Weserkurier:

It's about the topic of life in or between two cultures," says Jens-Ulrich Davids from the Bremer Literaturkontor, describing the new work by the Iranian writer Mahmood Falaki. Mahmood Falaki, who was born in northern Persia, presented his new book "Deadly Strangers" at the Villa Ichon as part of the "Bremer Book Premieres". (...) more