Lila Azam Zanganeh was born, quite by accident, in Paris to Iranian parents. After studying literature and philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she moved to the United States in 1998 to teach literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University.
She is, since 2002, a literary contributor to Le Monde and has been published in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Nation, The Paris Review, and La Repubblica. In 2006, she edited a collection of narrative essays on Iran. Her first book—Light of My Life, or How to Net the Incredible Happiness of an Extraordinary Writer—will be published in 2010.
Lila is fluent in six languages and serves on the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee. She also serves on the selection committee of the Sarlo Foundation Humanitarian Awards.
Whether as a haven of exotic sensuality or a stronghold of fanatic religiosity, Iran has, since ancient times, inflamed the popular imagination. Memories of the millennial dynasties of the shahs echo in the minds of onlookers with the convulsive days of the revolution. In the past months alone, Iran has appeared in the news almost daily: nuclear threats, conservative onslaughts, Islamic clampdowns, mock trials, and political assasinations. Yet there seems to be so little that Americans actually know about Iran, and decade after decade, the misunderstandings live on...
What, then, is this elusive Persian identity? And in the words of the eighteenth-century French philosopher Montesquieu, "How can one be Persian?"
[from the introduction to My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes]