About the book We Shine Like Gold: A Review of the Lives of Zoroastrians in Exile
Azar Mahloujian’s works often engage with the theme of exile. This time, she explores a different dimension of it. The Parsis of India—a small yet respected, influential, and powerful minority within Indian society—are the descendants of refugees who fled to India some 1,200 years ago to save themselves and preserve their Zoroastrian faith.
How can an exiled community succeed in maintaining its ethnic and cultural identity across centuries? In what ways do the conditions of migration and exile reshape one’s perception of homeland? Can this first group of Iranian exiles be compared with those of the modern era—and if so, what are their points of convergence and divergence?
These are the questions the author poses in this captivating travelogue, which spans Iran, India, and Sweden. In search of answers, she takes the reader on a long journey through history, to the Parsis of Bombay and other parts of India.
From a book review published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet