Hassan Masoumi
The novels
01 · Published
My Name Is Marcel
Geneva, 1920
Marcel’s life unfolds across Lebanon, Geneva, London, Beirut, and Dubai—a journey shaped by love, displacement, ambition, and the quiet ache of belonging nowhere completely. From the brightness of childhood to the compromises of adulthood, he carries the people and places he has lost within him. My Name Is Marcel is an intimate novel about memory, exile, family, and the long journey back to the life that first made us who we are.
The novel
02 · In editing
Fire Keeper
Persia, 646 CE · Udvada, 2015
Persia, 646 CE. As the Sasanian Empire collapses and an ancient world begins to disappear, Zarir is entrusted with protecting more than a sacred fire. Carrying memories of his homeland and the people he has lost, his journey leads from Isfahan through Basra and eventually eastward to Sanjan, India. Spanning nearly fourteen centuries and ending in Udvada, India, in 2015, Fire Keeper is an epic novel of faith, exile, survival, and inheritance—exploring what people carry with them when they are forced to leave their homeland, and how a flame can preserve the memory of an entire people.
The novel
03 · In writing
Before God and the Register
Constantinople, 1908
Constantinople, 1908. İlyas is the owner of a coffeehouse called the Two Shores, standing on a street still scarred by fire. Inside, Muslims, Christians, Armenians, officials, labourers, and survivors gather beneath one roof. When conflicting claims emerge over what the fire destroyed—and what the dead left behind—İlyas is forced to confront questions that no official record can easily settle. Before God and the Register is a historical novel about grief, justice, faith, and the fragile possibility of living together in a divided city.
The novel
04 · Forthcoming
The Name and the Music
The French Riviera, 1950s
On the French Riviera of the 1950s, an aristocratic family continues to host elegant dinners, glittering balls, and evenings filled with music, even as its fortune quietly disappears. Paintings are sold, rooms grow empty, and old loyalties begin to weaken—but appearances must be preserved. At the centre stands a piano, holding the memory of love, beauty, and everything the family cannot admit it is losing. The Name and the Music is a graceful novel about privilege, decline, longing, and the silence that remains when the music ends.
The novel