Book Description
The cult drama of The Girls meets Yellowface’s searing exploration of lies, immigration, and identity in this propulsive literary thriller debut.

A grieving actor-turned-memoirist reimagines his mother’s encounter with Jim Jones, the deadliest cult leader of all time—the only problem is, it’s mostly all lies . . .

Actor Jal Persad is enjoying moderate success when the death of his mother, Rita, sends him into a tailspin—after all, how could he grieve a woman he barely knew? Rita had grown up in Guyana during the rise and fall of the Jonestown cult, but never spoke of her home to Jal, always keeping him at a distance.

After months of avoiding work, a misunderstanding at lunch with his manager leads Jal into a web of lies. He soon finds himself writing a memoir of his mother’s adolescence, one that places her in direct contact with Jim Jones himself. There’s just one issue–Rita never met the man. Suddenly, the book goes viral, and Jal must face the looming threat of exposure, and his own guilt.

Alternating between Jal’s rapid rise and Rita’s distorted story, False Prophet confronts the intergenerational legacy of colonialism, the allure of power, and the age-old question–how much of yourself are you willing to lose in order to succeed?
 
About the Author
Afsheen Farhadi was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and his short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Catapult, Bright Lights Film Journal, and elsewhere. He served as the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing, Prose at Southern Methodist University, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.
 
Reviews
“With a wickedly compelling premise and a clever structure, False Prophet escalates suspensefully toward a final climactic choice. Afsheen Farhadi’s debut is a smart and very entertaining exploration of fame, faith, family, and the lies that we are desperate to believe.” — Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special

"False Prophet is a tense literary thriller about how what feels true can become more real than reality." — Foreword Reviews, STARRED review

"One commanding tale. . . exploring in different ways grief, immigration, colonialism, self-mythologizing, and the value of stories, regardless of their veracity. The result is a beautifully written consideration of the overwhelming need to belong." — Booklist