Akhtar Naraghi

Akhtar Naraghi is a Canadian poet, writer and scholar. She holds a doctorate in English literature from McGill University and works in English. Her novels are all written in the first person, and revolve around the narrator's efforts to make a home in new surroundings, in different cultures. She has published four novels, in the first three of which – The Big Green House (1994; short-listed for the QSPELL Hugh McLennan Prize for Fiction in 1995), Blue Curtains (1999) and With Mara That Summer (2004) – the narrator-protagonist recounts episodes from her life, beginning in early childhood and ending with her declining years. Her latest novel, On the Train to My Village (2011), is a story of love and the artist's existence partly inspired by the author's time spent in the Gaspé region of Quebec. Her work has been translated into French, Persian and German.