Jal is an actor who has begun experiencing a modicum of success after starring in two feature films. He is paralyzed by grief, avoiding work at all costs, and seeking solace in his new chihuahua mix, Teddy. A year after his mother’s death, he feels like he’s failed her. He’s never honored her by telling her story. He doesn’t even know her story; she told him next to nothing about her life in Guyana.
Jal is the main character in False Prophet, a new novel by Afsheen Farhadi, a creative writing professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Farhadi, like Jal, is the son of an immigrant mother from Guyana, and grew up in Phoenix. Readers sometimes ask whether that means the story is autobiographical, but Farhadi said that’s where the similarities end: Jal is a morally complex character who does many things in the novel that Farhadi said he would wholeheartedly advise against.
“That was the fun of writing this book—it’s investigating as deeply as I can what the psychological makeup of this person is,” Farhadi said. “What are the experiences that determine him making the choices he makes? When you’re the kid of immigrants, it’s your parents who help define your roots for you, especially if you’ve never been to the country they’re from. So, part of your identity does feel invisible to you. That aspect of (Jal’s) identity always felt like a mystery, given his mother’s pervasive silence—like an empty hole that needed to be filled.”
As a kid, Farhadi didn’t know much about Guyana, either—or his family’s life there.
“What I did know was that, growing up in Phoenix, I’d often heard my Uncle Arjune tell co-workers and curious grocery store clerks where he was from,” he said. “When they raised their eyebrows … my uncle would explain that Guyana was the country where Jim Jones took his followers—Jonestown, the Peoples Temple; ‘Don’t drink the Kool-Aid’—and this was often the only reference point his audience needed.”
In the novel, Jonestown is the only frame of reference Jal has to connect to his mother and her life in Guyana. Jal dodges his manager, Justin, for months, then, to prove he has been doing something, he impulsively lies and tells Justin that he has been writing a three-act memoir with “intrigue” and “heart” about his mother’s life growing up in Guyana, and her connection to Jim Jones himself.
The sickly cultural fascination with Jonestown is a draw, and Justin is interested. The only problem is that Jal has fabricated the story. His mother had no connection to Jones other than living in Guyana at the same time.
“Jonestown is the only thing he has to hold onto that connects the world to his mom, to his lineage, and to himself,” Farhadi said.
Jal’s “memoir” becomes real when Justin arranges for Kate, a ghostwriter, to help Jal write it. Kate, a newly single mother, relates to portions of the life of Rita, Jal’s mother who had navigated being pregnant without the father in the picture. Jal almost pulls the plug and tells Kate the truth, but seeing how personal the project is to her, he can’t do it. Besides, this project was already yielding things Jal had been needing and wanting—like love, adoration and attention.
Farhadi said he did only a minimal level of research on Jonestown, partly because he doesn’t particularly enjoy research, and partly because he wanted to know about the same amount as Jal did.
“It’s funny looking back, because I did write a historical novel, which I felt would only be hurt by more research,” he said.
The novel alternates between the frame story, Jal’s first-person narration, and excerpts from the third-person memoir he’s fabricating about his mother with Kate’s help. Farhadi wanted each portion to feel complete on its own while building on each other, operating as a kind of character study revealing the complexities of Jal—including the blurred line of reality when you start to believe your own lies.
“Jal is an antihero in some ways, but I wanted the readers to fall in love with him,” said Farhadi. “I wanted him to be very vulnerable, and he’s very insecure. But he’s also kind of sweet, and he wants the thing that we all want—he wants to be loved. He wasn’t loved, or maybe doesn’t feel like he was particularly loved by his mom, and that traumatized him a bit.”
Many of Jal’s actions are morally gray at best, and the novel continually gestures to the age-old question of who gets to tell which story. But if it’s anyone’s story to make up, it’s Jal’s—at least that’s what he tells himself. He’s not taking someone else’s story.
“He’s bereft of his own,” Farhadi said. “And so, we understand in a human sense why he would do this, and in some ways why it’s not really hurting anyone, at least at the start. But as the lie grows, and he continues to mythologize himself, then it’s leading into very bad territory.”
Afsheen Farhadi’s Reno book launch for False Prophet, which will include a reading and conversation with fellow writer Jon Hickey, is slated for 6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 22, at the Nevada Museum of Art, at 160 W. Liberty St., from 6 to 7 p.m.