About Lila Azam Zanganeh
Lila Azam Zanganeh was born in Paris to Iranian parents. After studying literature and philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she moved to the United States to teach literature and cinema at Harvard University. Lila has contributed criticism, interviews, and essays to a host of publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Le Monde, La Repubblica, and The Paris Review. In 2021, she published a long-form essay in Lolita in the Afterlife (Vintage). Her forthcoming novel, Exit Paradise, will be published in 2025.
Lila's first book, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness, was the recipient of the 2011 Roger Shattuck Prize, delivered by the Center for Fiction, and was published worldwide in thirteen languages by:
- Norton, United States
- Penguin, United Kingdom
- L'Olivier, France
- Contact, Netherlands
- L'Ancora del Mediterraneo, Italy
- Duomo Ediciones, Spain
- Azbooka, Russia
- Büchergilde Gutenberg, Germany
- Everest, Turkey
- Shang Shu, China
- Al-Kamel, Lebanon
- Mehri, Iran/United Kingdom
- Alfaguara Objetiva, Brazil
→ Reached #10 on National Bestseller List
In 2013, Lila was part of the collective Where You Are (Visual Editions, in collaboration with Google Creative Labs), alongside authors Geoff Dyer, Sheila Heti, Valeria Luiselli, and Adam Thirlwell.
Lila serves as a Director on the Board of Trustees for the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation, and as a member of the Advisory Board of Libraries Without Borders. Since 2015, she has been an ambassador for Narrative4, a global story-exchange organization that promotes radical empathy. Previously, she sat on the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit organization that responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, for twelve years.
Lila served as a judge on a panel of five, chaired by Baroness Lola Young, for the 2017 Man Booker Prize and for the 2020 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
She speaks seven languages and lives in New York City.
© Christian Maldonado