The Laughter of The Gods (Iran)

The Laughter of the Gods is a realist and surrealist novel set against the backdrop of a real and shocking historical event: the crash of Flight PS752. On 8 January 2020, Flight PS752 (Tehran-Kiev) was tragically shot down with two missiles only minutes after takeoff from Tehran by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This heinous operation claimed the lives of all 176 innocent passengers and crew of the flight.

With a layered “book within a book” structure, the novel draws the reader into a world where the boundaries between reality and dream, death and identity, are constantly shifting. Death itself is the narrator, a voice pursuing a forbidden love and a journey of self-discovery. In the world of this novel, there are no heroes; the characters are people burdened by emotional and sexual voids, as well as by chosen and unchosen responsibilities, becoming at once both the heroes and antiheroes of their own lives.