An Iranian Family Saga That Reads Like a Movie
BY Lily Meyer
Rabeah Ghaffari has had an exceptional career. She’s an actor, documentarian, and film editor who has worked with Shirin Neshat and Tony Kushner, and, most recently, written a screenplay for Sex and the City costumer Patricia Field. She’s told many stories in many forms — but when she began thinking about a retired judge and his wife in pre-Revolution Iran, holding their family together from the center of an ancient orchard, she knew this story was different. Ghaffari began writing a screenplay, which morphed into her debut novel, To Keep the Sun Alive.
LINK TO FULL INTERVIEW: https://electricliterature.com/an-iranian-family-saga-that-reads-like-a-movie-4192b40a7181
'To Keep The Sun Alive' By Rabeah Ghaffari Is A Tale Of One Family In The Midst Of The Iranian Revolution
BY E. CE MILLER
“There’s a joke that came out in Iran after the revolution that goes something like this: Before the revolution we prayed in our homes and drank in the streets. After the revolution we drink in our homes and pray in the streets,” Rabeah Ghaffari, author of the debut novel, To Keep the Sun Alive, tells Bustle. Her novel tells the story of one family — led by a retired judge and his wife, who own an ancient orchard in the Iranian city of Naishapur — living during their country's revolution in 1979.
LINK TO FULL INTERVIEW: https://www.bustle.com/p/to-keep-the-sun-alive-by-rabeah-ghaffari-is-a-tale-of-one-family-in-the-midst-of-the-iranian-revolution-15645503
REVOLUTION WAS COMING: A CONVERSATION WITH RABEAH GHAFFARI
BY ALANA MOHAMED
"When I met Rabeah Ghaffari, filmmaker, writer, and actress, for dinner at Sofreh, a Persian restaurant in Prospect Heights, she seemed to know everyone there. “I’ve known [owner] Nasim and her husband forever,” she explains. Throughout the evening we had a lively conversation, covering everything from Ta’zieh, the Iranian performance reenacting the massacre of Hussein (Muhammad’s grandson) and his followers, to the merits of reading Dostoevsky before bed. Art, food, and books are cultural products she believes can unite the world and her debut novel, To Keep the Sun Alive, is rich with these references as she dives into the story of a fractured family in the lead up to the Iranian Revolution.”
LINK TO FULL INTERVIEW: https://therumpus.net/2018/11/the-rumpus-interview-with-rabeah-ghaffari/
