Sanam Mahloudji’s hilarious and heart-rending debut novel The Persians has an element of family dysfunction that rivals The Royal Tenenbaums, albeit with five Iranian women at the centre and foreground of this story rather than the men. In Iran, the esteemed but flawed Valiat family were respected; in America, nobody cares who they are or were.

The Valiat family comprise matriarch Elizabeth, who stayed behind in Tehran when her daughters left for America at the dawn of the 1979 Iranian revolution and whose ‘large nose’ fuels insecurity issues; her daughters Shirin, like an Iranian version of Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, and Seema, who leads an extravagantly empty life of soul-searching in LA; and grandchildren Bita and Niaz, the former a disgruntled law graduate and the latter a rebellious campaigner who stayed in Tehran with Elizabeth.

The Persians jumps into the past and present of these five very different women’s interlocking lives. It is rare to find a novel that so beautifully depicts the Iranian experience of American life, as the Valiat family grapple with identity and family challenges – both historical and current, back home and abroad.