December 20, 2004

Morteza Baharloo (mortezabaharloo.com) is the author of The Quince Seed Potion, an Iranian émigré writer's novel set against the backdrop of Iran's turbulent modern history and spanning the years 1928 to 1981. It is a saga of the devotion and love, violence and humiliation in the life of Sarveali Jokar, a servant to a great dynastic family of rural landowners and a man whose changing fortunes mirror the changes in Iran and the disintegration of the wealth and power of the family dynasty as the Islamic Revolution of 1979 unfolds.

Baharloo was born in Iran in 1961, emigrated to the U.S. in 1978, and now lives in Houston. He is chairman and co-founder of Healix, Ltd., a Texas-based international provider of pharmaceutical and health-care services. He returns periodically to Iran, where he is restoring rural estates built by his grandfather and great uncles in the 1920s.

Sent by Darius Kadivar

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