Marsha Mehran, an Iranian-born author who wrote a hugely successful debut novel centred on Iranian expatriates in Ireland, died unexpectedly and, to date, inexplicably, at the end of April at her rented home in the village of Lecanvey, Mayo. She was 36.
Mehran said her own experiences had inspired her first novel, Pomegranate Soup, the story of three sisters who escape Iran during the revolution of 1979 and open a Persian cafe in a small town in the west of Ireland. Pomegranate Soup became known in the book world as The Iranian Chocolat, a reference to Joanne Harris's 1999 novel and its movie adaptation about a young single mother who arrives in a French village and sets up a chocolate shop.
"I wanted to write a happy story, something uplifting and a joy to read," Mehran told The Irish Times in an interview. "Nothing woven, textual, literary. Just something that would make me happy. Food makes me happy. When you cook for someone, you are extending your heart to them; that's how Persians feel. "
The book, published by Random House, was an international bestseller, translated into more than a dozen languages and published in more than 20 countries.
She wrote a sequel, Rosewater and Soda Bread, in 2008. Pistachio Rain, the third in what was a planned series of seven books, is to be published this year.
Standalone novel
She had also been expected to publish a standalone novel, The Margaret Thatcher School of Beauty, set in Argentina during the Falklands war.
Mehran was born in Tehran in 1977. Her family fled the country at the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, settling in Buenos Aires. There she attended St Andrew's, a Scottish private academy, "where students spoke English exclusively and where we pledged loyalty to the British monarchy every morning," she wrote in a column in the New York Times Magazine.
"Meanwhile, I was learning three languages simultaneously (Farsi at home, English at school and Spanish in the streets). Every night before going to bed, I was required to say good night in all three languages: 'Shab bekheir, buenas noches and good night'."
Amid political unrest after the collapse of the Argentine economy in 1984, the family moved to Miami when she was eight. Six years later, after her parents' divorce, she went with her mother to Australia. Five years after that, she left for New York, she said, "looking for a place to call home". In New York, Mehran met Christopher Collins, an Irish man, and married him. They shuttled frequently between their home in Brooklyn and Mayo. They recently separated.
'I am Persian'
In her New York Times article, Mehran wrote of her cross-cultural life: "When people ask me where I am from, I say I am Persian, born in Iran. I write and dream in English, I curse in Spanish and, after a few pints of Guinness, I dance a mighty Irish jig." An inquest in Castlebar on Wednesday was told that she had been ill for some weeks, regularly vomiting, and had not responded to messages or calls from estate agent Teresa Walsh who eventually found her body.
Her father, Abbas Mehran, told the inquest that when his daughter was deeply immersed in her writing she did not care about herself. There was little food in her house apart from huge bowls of pasta and noodles "so she could work and work".
Pathologist Dr Tiede Nemeth, who carried out a postmortem, said he had not been able to establish the cause of death and the results of toxicology tests were awaited.