Hooman Majd

Born in Tehran but educated in the West, Hooman Majd is the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (an Economist and Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2008) and The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge, as well as his most recent book, The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay. He lives in New York City.

Hooman Majd has also written for GQ, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Politico, The New York Observer, Interview, The Daily Beast, and Salon, among others. He has also published short fiction in literary journals such as Guernica, The American Scholar, and Bald Ego.

Majd has also served as an advisor and translator for President Mohammad Khatami and translator for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their trips to the United States and the United Nations, and has written about those experiences.

Majd's maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Assar (1885-1975), who was born to an Iraqi mother and an Iranian father. The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. His own father, whose origins were in the village of Ardakan, Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization".

Raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, Majd lived from infancy abroad, mostly in the US and in England but attending American schools in varied places, such as Tunis and New Delhi. He boarded at St Paul's School in London, England and attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He stayed in the US after the 1979 revolution and finished his college education in the US.