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A searing portrait of forced girlhood and generational grief, Given Away reveals the quiet strength of a woman surviving child marriage and motherhood in 1930s Iran.
In 1930s Iran, ten-year-old Mehri is given away in marriage, the first step in a life shaped by forced motherhood, loss, and sacrifice. Alone and afraid, she navigates married life far from the support of her mother and sisters. Pregnant by thirteen, Mehri bears child after child, losing many along the way, and struggles to mother her five surviving children through a haze of grief. In Given Away, Nahid Rachlin traces the hidden scars of her family’s history, carved by a system that grants men complete control and strips women of their voices. Yet within that silence, Rachlin reveals a quiet resistance rooted in sisterhood, love, and endurance.
Nahid Rachlin (1950-2025) was the author of Mirage (Red Hen 2024), Crowd of Sorrows (Kindle Singles 2015), Persian Girls (Penguin 2006) Jumping Over Fire (City Lights 2006), Veils (City Lights 2001), Foreigner (W.W. Norton 1999), and Married to a Stranger (E.P. Dutton 1983). Her individual short stories appeared in many individual magazines, including Solstice Literary Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Redbook, Shenandoah. Her work was translated into Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Dutch, German, Czech, Arabic, and Persian. She was interviewed on NPR Fresh Air, Poets & Writers Magazine, and Writers Chronicle. She lived in New York, NY.