The Revolutionary’s Cousin

Author’s Note Although The Revolutionary’s Cousin is a sequel to my first novel The Afghan Wife, it stands alone as a story. It is a work of fiction, but I have referred to some real people and places. Youri Egorov, the concert pianist, actually existed. He escaped from the USSR during the cold war, but sadly died in New York in 1982. The Dead Dog Saloon in South Carolina is a colourful establishment, which I visited a couple of years ago. The New York subways are in a much better condition than they were in 1980. My description of them in the novel dates from then, not now. I’ve included a glossary at the end of the book that contains the Persian words I’ve used in the text. Dress restrictions in Iran have eased somewhat since 1979 and not all women wear a chador. However, every woman must still adhere to the Islamic dress code and wear a headscarf in public as well as a long-sleeved, three-quarter length top and full-length pants. The Fairly Meadow Migrant Hostel was an actual place and I taught English there from 1979 to 1981. The hostel was opened in 1951 to deal with an influx of migrants and refugees to Australia post WWII. It was still open in 1979, when my character Zahra arrived and it closed in 1982. The land it occupied is now part of the University of Wollongong. The characters in this book, however, are purely fictional. Zahra’s story is not based on any particular person I met while I was teaching at the hostel. For the sake of the story, I altered the Illawarra train timetable and only allowed the express train from Wollongong to Sydney to stop once. Gulf Air no longer flies to Sydney but it was an important carrier in 1979. Devotees of Jane Eyre might find that incidents from the novel have been updated and eased into my own story. This reflects my abiding admiration of Charlotte Brontë’s work.