Wednesday, July 22 | 11am
OJMCHE’s book club meets every other month midday at the museum. The book selection for July 2026 is The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer.
To stay in the loop about book club activities, email bookclub@ojmche.org and we will keep you updated.
About Book Selection for July
Winner of a 2007 Whiting Writers Award, this accomplished literary debut set in Tehran during the aftermath of the 1979 revolution follows the Amin family as they cope with the father’s false imprisonment for being a spy, watch their formerly peaceful world collapse, and flee their homeland.
When Isaac Amin disappears, wrongly accused of being a Zionist spy, his household is transformed from a serene, sun-drenched villa into a crumbling stack of cards. His wife, young daughter, and son (who was sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs) all live in private sorrow as they are forced to reconcile the new world around them with the collapse of their own. Eventually they decide they must flee, but with members of their own household acting as potential informants for the revolutionaries, they fear discovery and face a journey of impossible danger.
Loosely based on Sofer’s own experience, The Septembers of Shiraz is beautifully told, simmering with questions of identity, alienation, religion, ideals, friendship, and above all love, not just for a spouse, a child, or a friend, but also for the smells and colors of the places where one has lived and in whose soil one’s ancestors are buried.