Book Review on Shappi Khorsandi's 'A beginner's guide to acting English'

The well known Iranian comedian Shappi Khorsandi writes a surprisingly emotional account of her childhood in her book, ‘A Beginners guide to acting English’. Her memoir reflects on the Iran-Iraq war and follows her traditional but endearing family as they begin their lives as immigrants in London.
Immigration is a recent social trend which is currently being explored in novels as well as memoirs like this one. For example Rose Tremain’s ‘The Road Home’ is a novel about the experience of a polish immigrant recently arrived in London. This novel is moving and sad so it was surprising that Khorsandi’s memoir of immigration takes a different approach. It deals with war, political intrigue and the defiance of Shappi’s journalist father and the tone is often comic and even light hearted at times. The role of comedy here may be to take the sting out of a frightening and serious topic and give the author a way of dealing with difficulties. It seems important to question the reliability of this memoir. Shappi Khorsandi applies large amounts of descriptive detail about her early childhood which could suggest that her accounts are partly fictionalised. In addition she has invented an omniscient narrator whose account is written in italics and who can relate events that the author could not possibly know about in detail.
Despite this, ‘A beginner’s guide to acting English’ is an enthralling book that is hard to put down and even, in parts, moved me to tears.