Q: What first compelled you to tell this story? How did it come to you?
Taqi: There’s a very personal and immediate background to this book. I arrived in Australia in March 2014, and after four months, my wife returned to our home country for a visit because she was homesick. I was alone here, and on 26 July, I woke up and, as I did daily, checked the news from back home.
That day, the headlines reported something horrifying yet tragically familiar: 14 civilians shot dead on the road to Kabul. Three buses had been stopped, and passengers separated by identity. Those marked as Hazara were executed—men, women, children, a bride and groom on their way to a wedding.
I realized then I had to tell the story—not as a news report, but as a human story. The radical act, for me, was writing back a name erased from history.
Q: Why is this story important? What is SHIRIN really about?
Taqi: At its core, it is about the sanctity of life. Nothing is worth a life. Not a human life, not even the life of an ant. Every life, created and sustained by the universe, is of ultimate value. The book is also a meditation on memory, erasure, and resistance. It is about remembering when forces—political, cultural, religious—seek to erase a person or a people.
Q: You wrote the story from the perspective of a young Hazara woman. What responsibility did you feel in capturing her voice?
Taqi: My responsibility was not to reduce the sources of violence.
In my country, women carry centuries of layered oppression. I wanted a narrator whose experience could encompass those layers: as a woman, as a Muslim in a hostile environment, as a discriminated Hazara, as someone spiritually independent, and someone whose emotional life places her outside accepted norms.
It wasn’t about me claiming her experience; the story itself demanded this voice. The radical choice was to write from inside that perspective, to illuminate the weight of history, and to restore memory that had been denied.
Q: How does memory function in the novel?
Taqi: Memory is central because the first act of oppression is to erase it. Even a name, a fundamental marker of identity, can be taken away. In Afghanistan, girls’ names are often replaced with standard, generic designations. Aghai, the protagonist, grows up with that absence, and the novel becomes an act of reclaiming memory—her name, her story, her being.
Q: Can you speak to the Australian connection in the book?
Taqi: The relationship between Aghai and Kylie creates a quieter parallel between Hazara and First Nations experiences—memory, erasure, inherited trauma. It isn’t just about migration; it’s about how erasure resonates across cultures and histories, and how connection allows healing to begin.
Q: How much of SHIRIN is based on real events?
Taqi: Almost entirely. Every incident, every injustice, every reflection of violence is drawn from real life. The only imaginative element is how I weave these pieces together—stylistically, creatively—but nothing is invented.
Q: What does the novel say about displacement and belonging in Australia?
Taqi: Multiculturalism has protected me here, but I also believe it is limited. Cultures are inherently divisive. People are willing to die—and to kill—for them. True harmony requires something deeper, a framework beyond the surface of cultural coexistence. SHIRIN reflects that tension—the struggle to belong while carrying the weight of erasure and trauma.
Q: What makes the act of writing SHIRIN radical or urgent?
Taqi: The radical act is not only telling the story but restoring what was taken: Aghai’s name, memory, identity. Writing it back into being is a defiance against forces that would erase her, and, by extension, countless others.
Q: How did your own experiences shape the novel?
Taqi: I am a refugee who has faced persecution, loss, and exile. I’ve seen people killed in front of me. That trauma informs everything—the urgency, the empathy, the insistence on truth. Yet, paradoxically, it also deepens my appreciation of life, of beauty, of joy—like the enduring presence of trees, the simplest miracle of existence.
Q: Were there particularly difficult scenes to write?
Taqi: Yes. The most harrowing parts are the collective history of my people—the blood, fire, and destruction. Even now, three nights a week, I wake from dreams haunted by these images. Writing it requires reliving that pain to honor it faithfully.
Q: How long did it take to write SHIRIN?
Taqi: Eleven years, seven months, and sixteen days.
Q: What literary influences shaped you?
Taqi: My influences are eclectic: Victor Hugo in high school; Latin American magic realism and existentialism; postmodern and Jewish literature; Hemingway and contemporary American writers. Each offered different lenses on human experience and storytelling.
Q: What would you like readers to take away from the book?
Taqi: That life is sacred, memory is a form of resistance, and restoring erased voices is an act of justice. Above all, that storytelling can reclaim what oppression tries to erase, and that witnessing—even through fiction—is a radical act of survival and defiance.
Q: Last question—are you an atheist?
Taqi: I am neither religious nor an atheist. I am a novelist.
That is not a neutral position, nor a refuge of intellectual safety. It is an active opposition to structures that turn belief into rigidity. To be a novelist is to refuse fixed ground. To remain in a space where conviction no longer offers comfort and can no longer justify violence.
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SHIRIN: A Novel is published by Palaver (www.palaver.com).
For further information contact the editors, Paul Komesaroff paul.komesaroff@monash.edu or Sally Gardner (sally.gardner@deakin.edu.au).