My guest this week is Roya Hakakian. Roya is a Jewish Iranian American writer, investigative journalist, poet, and political commentator. I am a huge fan of Roya’s work and her reminders of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s long history of perfidy and hypocrisy are more timely than ever. She has been a guest on the Quillette podcast several times before to talk to us about her girlhood growing up in revolutionary Tehran, about current and historical protests against the Ayatollahs, and about former government officials who have found immunity for their crimes in the West. She has also written some important long reads for the magazine. Today, I’ll be talking to her about her book Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, which Christopher Hitchens described as “unmissable” on its first publication. It is a riveting political and courtroom thriller about the assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Berlin in 1992, masterminded by the Islamic Republic. We’ll be discussing the relationship between Iran and Germany and how and why the Iranian regime was able to commit crimes on foreign soil with impunity for so long. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Roya Hakakian.

Roya Hakakian - Quillette

Roya Hakakian is an Iranian American Jewish journalist, lecturer, and writer. She is the author, most recently, of ‘The Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious.’

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