Laleh Khadivi's novel asks whether a daughter's late mother was an enforcer of Iran's Islamic Revolution

Photographs of a younger version of her late mother, veiled in black with a machine gun slung over her shoulder, open Laleh Khadivi's novel Female Life on Planet Earth. The Guardian's review, published 22 October 2026, says the book asks whether the mother was an enforcer of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The novel's protagonist, Heti, lives in Los Angeles.