Back in Seattle for both this evening's reading and an appearance at Saturday's Seattle Iranian Festival, at Seattle Center, is Bay Area novelist Anita Amirrezvani. Here when her debut novel, The Blood of Flowers, was published five years ago, she now has a second, historically-set novel, Equal of the Sun (Scribner). "Amirrezvani's sixteenth century Iran is a world as complex as Shakespeare's London, that seethes with intrigue, passion, and lawlessness, a world where a brilliant young princess, who longs for power denied her as a female, and a servant, with a desire so relentless he half-destroys himself, make a desperate pact to control the government and fate of their country, and in doing so discover their greatest loves and sorrows. In this astonishing novel Amirrezvani reminds us what all human hearts suffer and dare." – Jonis Agee.