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"Like most Easterners, I have a large family, with stories flowing in all directions. Unlike Westerners who have "family secrets," in the East, and in this case in Iran, we talk a lot, we tell everything, and we grow up in a family with all these characters from the past and these stories. So, I tried to transcribe this impression that I felt as a child living in the middle of a huge family—including ghosts!—but also the amazement of listening to stories told by the elders. I created some characters by drawing right and left from memory, others that I invented because they served the story, others that are a mix of people I knew. Finally, being imbued with this past helped me to compose a gallery of characters without my being overly concerned about whether the Western reader would recognize them." - Negar Djavadi


 

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