Nazanine Hozar was born in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada as a child with her family in 1985. Hozar is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s creative writing MFA program. Hozar lives in Vancouver and teaches Creative Writing at Simon Fraser University’s Writer Studio.
Fiction
Aria
Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2019.
PS8615 .O96 A75 2019
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Nazanine Hozar’s stunning debut takes us inside the Iranian revolution–but seen like never before, through the eyes of an orphan girl. Through Aria, we meet three very different women who are fated to mother the lost child: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, wife of the kind-hearted soldier; wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who welcomes Aria into her home, adopting her as an heir; and finally, the mysterious, impoverished Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden. The novel’s heart-pounding conclusion takes us through the brutal revolution that installs the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader, even as Aria falls in love and becomes a young mother herself.
Awards and Honours
2019 Globe 100 (Globe and Mail, 30 Nov. 2019)
2020 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (Finalist)
2020 Amazon Canada First Novel Award (Finalist)
Fiction
The Small Ones
Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2026.
forthcoming Sept. 2026
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
In The Small Ones, Nazanine Hozar crafts a gripping fable about children who are caught up in a military insurgence along the Iran–Iraq border in the early 1980s (based on the real-life conflict of that time) and forced to become soldiers and martyrs. This ragtag group of boys and one small girl create a little family of their own even as they yearn to return to their lost homes and safety.
The Small Ones is at heart about fathers and sons—unreliable father figures in the repressive Iran of Hozar’s telling whose personal quests for power lead to pain and bloodshed. It is also a tale about what it takes to not only survive but end such wars. The story centres on narrator Amir and his best friend Clay, who appears to be both a human boy and a creature of myth. With them, we embark on a full-circle journey, following the ancient river Karun along the borderland until freedom is in reach, but at a terrible cost.
An extraordinary novel that takes us unflinchingly into a storm of deadly conflict through the eyes of its youngest participants, The Small Ones is a searing look at cycles of coercion, bloodshed and war, and the cost of escaping them for the hope of a better life.
Links
Publisher Knopf Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada