Afsheen Farhadi (He/Him)
Afsheen Farhadi was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of the novel, FALSE PROPHET (2026, Melville House), and the forthcoming essay collection, THE CREEPS: MEDITATIONS ON HORROR (Fall 2027, University of Iowa Press). His short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Catapult, Bright Lights Film Journal, and elsewhere. He has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where he was a Provost Graduate Fellow, and served as the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing, Prose at Southern Methodist University. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.
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Communities: Arizona Author
Book:
False Prophet
Fiction / Literature
Melville House Publishing LLC
July 2026
ISBN 9781685892418
paperback, 289 pages
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? More/less
