The Last Illusion - Hardcover

Utterly original and compelling, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with very contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad - and wonderful, too (Claire Messud)

Deftly, unexpectedly, blends Persian myth with modern life, and with the perils and pleasures of magic. In a gripping, sinuous, sometimes explosive voice, Porochista Khakpour tell us a story like no other, with a protagonist like no other - and there is not a reader who will not remember him always (Amy Bloom)

Magical and hysterical, each sentence more beautiful than the next, The Last Illusion proves Khakpour a novelist-dazzler on the magnitude of an Aimee Bender or a Jonathan Lethem. The English language has a new master tickler and it is laughing out loud (Gary Shteyngart)

Porochista Khakpour's mesmerizing The Last Illusion recasts a medieval Persian legend, placing it in the era of 9/11 (Vanity Fair)

Reads like a finely woven, magic Persian carpet (Vogue)

Khakpour probes questions of selfhood with gusto and poignancy, dramatising Zal's escape form the psychological cage of his past (Independent on Sunday)

Khakpour explores her evolving, Iranian-American mythology on a much wider canvas . Holds enough lyrical richness and ingenious observation of a singular historical moment to make us eager to see where Khakpour flies next (Times Literary Supplement)