Mojgan Ghazirad Tells of Iranian Revolution from a Young Girl's Perspective in 'The House on Sun Street'

Medical doctor and assistant professor of pediatrics at The George Washington University, Mojgan Ghazirad, sits down with us to talk about her autobiographical, historical fiction novel, The House on Sun Street. Set in Iran, The House on Sun Street tells the story of a young girl named Moji and the hardships her and her family went through during the time of the Iranian Revolution. When Ghazirad first set out to write this book, she wrote it as a memoir, intending to write about her life growing up in Iran and later immigrating to the United States. However, as she continued working on it, she became aware that Moji, the character based on herself, began taking on a life of her own. “As I wrote down the story and as the character of Moji was developing on the page, I noticed that she is going [in] a different direction than mine. So… even though Moji experiences some of my life story, she is a character of her own, and this is a fictional book…” While the story did turn into a novel, Ghazirad still shared similarities to Moji. For instance, like Moji, Ghazirad also has a younger sister and brother and her grandparents also lived in a house on Sun Street in central Tehran. And just as Moji’s grandfather did, Ghazirad’s grandfather also read One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales, to her as a young child. “As he started to read… even without knowing, I was absorbed by his voice, by the story… so he captured me and that book played a major role in my childhood and later on when I re-read it as an adult… that part is pretty much very real in my own life and the house that I mention in the book and everything that happened in the house, but obviously the people are changed. I have more aunts and uncles than the ones that are written here… [but] the environment is pretty much the same at the time of the Iranian Revolution in Iran.”

Even with her busy schedule working as a NICU doctor, Ghazirad still finds time to write. “I think it’s the love of writing. I really enjoy my time writing. I feel like it gives me a sense of satisfaction and pleasure the days that I write. I was an avid book reader. I’m still an avid book reader, and words are my world even though I felt like I took a different path. Maybe if I… continued to live and study in the United States, I would have become a literary academic…”