Today it is my pleasure to introduce my special guest author today, Dora Levy Mossanen.

 Hi Dora, I just have one question for you today.  Please describe your experience as an immigrant to the United States. What sort of culture shock did you experience? Did your journey as an immigrant inspire Soraya’s character?  

 Dora: I’ve experienced two major cultural shocks.  Once when I moved from Israel to Iran at the age of nine.  And again, when I was forced to leave Iran for the United States.  Despite being a child, or because of it, perhaps, the move from Israel to Iran shook me in more profound and long-lasting ways, so much so that those early memories live on and continue to haunt my stories.  Israel is a liberal country known to cherish its young, to give them voice, and encourage them to form ideas and flourish.  But the Iran I moved to at the age of nine had a way of delegating children to the fringes of society.  I had to learn to hide my emotions and keep silent in the company of adults, to wait for adults to serve themselves during meals, select the best crunchy rice and tender shank, before we children dared touch the food. But the most disturbing was the coincidence of arriving in Tehran on the very week that the 1953 coup d’état of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the prime mister of the time, broke out.  Statues of the Shah in prominent squares were yanked off their pedestals and urinated on in full view.  Governmental offices and buildings were set on fire.  The entire city of Tehran seemed to be aflame in the stifling August heat.

We temporarily moved in with my grandparents in a small apartment overlooking Shah Reza Avenue, a major thoroughfare, and the pulse of the political landscape of the capital I remember the hours I spent at a low window, my elbows on the ledge, my chin cupped in my hands as I watched military jeeps cross the avenue below, the acrid stench of smoke and gunpowder levitating above.  Chador-clad women fled the streets like flocks of ominous ravens.  Why did we leave Israel, my child’s mind wondered, a country where women fought side by side with men in the army.  Why did we have to come to this burning hell, where women were ashamed to show their faces?
 
Then, Mohammad Reza Shah, who had fled to Italy the week before, came back to Tehran.  Life returned to normal.  The Shah ruled for another 26 years.  Iran became home.  This was where I was married, where I raised my family.
 
 Then the Islamic Revolution of 1979 forced the Shah and his family to, once again, leave the country. Ayatollah Khomeini returned after years of exile.  We hurriedly packed a suitcase and came to California, certain we’d be back once the Shah’s allies fascilitated his return home.  History, of course, proved otherwise. 
 
Here’s an excerpt from Scent of Butterflies as an example of how Soraya’s reflections are not unlike my own when I first came to Los Angeles.   “In 1979, at the outset of the revolution, and for some years after that, we, the so called “Aristocracy,” believed – and, more than anything, hoped—that the Islamic Republic of Iran was a temporary madness, religious fanatics who would not and could not last.  Iranians, we rationalized, at least those of us who had the courage to discuss matters among ourselves, were too modern, too educated, too westernized to bow down to the hold of fundamentalists.  We were wrong.  Their roots have burrowed deep. They’re here to stay.”
 
So once again I was forced to adjust to a new cultural environment, this one far more liberal than the one I had become accustomed to.  And this time with two children in tow—a three-year-old who did not speak English and a twelve-year-old, who teetered on the brink of teenage-hood, with a bewildered mother who had no idea how to navigate the permissive society she would call home.   What happened the following years and how we all adjusted merits another many pages.  But suffice it to say that like Soraya, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  After experiencing personal betrayal.  I began thinking about writing a story about betrayal set against the political background of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.  I wanted to tell the story of a Jewish Iranian woman, who has the courage, or the madness, to break free of the many cultural and societal restrictions forced upon her, flee to Los Angeles, and plan her intricate revenge against the woman her husband is having an affair with.
 
And, oh!  How very satisfying it was to give life to the glorious Soraya, who goes about extracting her revenge in ways I would not even dare think of in my darkest fantasies.
 
Thanks you so much for sharing your experience with us Dora! 
 
About Dora Levy Mossanen:
 
Dora Levy Mossanen was born in Israel and moved to Iran when she was nine. At the onset of the Islamic revolution, she and her family moved to the United States. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of California-Los Angeles and a master’s in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California.

Dora is the bestselling author of the acclaimed novels Harem, Courtesan, and The Last Romanov. Her fourth and most provocative book, Scent of Butterflies, was released January 7, 2014. She is a frequent contributor to numerous media outlets including the Huffington Post and the Jewish Journal. She has been featured on KCRW, The Politics of Culture, Voice of Russia, Radio Iran and numerous other radio and television programs. She is the recipient of the prestigious San Diego Editors’ choice award and was accepted as contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Dora Levy Mossanen’s novels have been translated into numerous languages world-wide.

 
About Scent of Butterflies:
 
A novel singed by the flavors of Tehran, imbued with the Iranian roots of Persepolis and the culture clash of Rooftops of Tehran, this is a striking, nuanced story of a woman caught between two worlds, from the bestselling author of Harem, Courtesan, and The Last Romanov.
A Love So Deep Can Forever Scar the Soul
Such audacity she has, Soraya, a woman who dares to break free of the diamond-studded leash of her culture. A woman who refuses to accept the devastating betrayal her husband has perpetrated. A woman who refuses to forgive her best friend.
Soraya turns her back on Iran, fleeing to America to plot her intricate revenge. The Shah has fallen, her country is in turmoil, her marriage has crumbled, and she is unraveling. The cruel and intimate blow her husband has dealt her awakens an obsessive streak that explodes in the heated world of Los Angeles.
Yet the secret Soraya discovers proves far more devastating than anything she had imagined, unleashing a whirlwind of unexpected events that will leave the reader breathless.
 
Thanks to Dora Levy Mossanen and Sourcebooks, I am giving away one print copy.  This giveaway is open to the U. S. and Canada.  Please use Rafflecopter to enter.  I will be posting my thoughts on Scent of Butterflies Soon! 

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