New novel 'False Prophet' tells the story of actor uncovering family secrets in Phoenix

An actor who grew up in Phoenix is forced to face both the truths and the untruths about his family in a new novel, called "False Prophet."

It follows the story of Jal, as he works his way through dealing with the death of his mother — about whom, it turns out, Jal didn’t know all that much.

The story also involves the Jonestown cult, which leader Jim Jones started in the U.S., but relocated to Guyana, where Jal’s mom was from. That’s the cult that inspired the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” when more than 900 of Jones’ followers died in 1978, after consuming a poisoned drink.

Afsheen Farhadi is the author of "False Prophet"; he also teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno — and like Jal, he grew up in the Valley.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Afsheen, where did the idea for the story come from?

AFSHEEN FARHADI: My mom's family is from Guyana and there isn't a ton of overlap between my life and Jal's, the main character of the novel. But one similarity is that he was also born and raised in Phoenix where when I was growing up at least, there wasn't really a big Guyanese presence.

When my family told people they were from Guyana, people often thought they meant Ghana, or misheard and said "Ghana?" So in order to distinguish Guyana for them, my family would say, "Well, have you heard of Jonestown, Jim Jones, The Peoples Temple?" Often that did the trick and so it became this marker of Guyana, not just for these strangers, but for me.

So as weird as it might seem or sound, from a young age, Jonestown and Jim Jones have always kind of figured into my understanding of myself and sort of colored the way I see the world. And I think the novel started there with me wanting to explore what it is that's so compelling, perennially compelling about these cults. And I think one reason is because for most of us, we see evidence of cult-like behavior in various facets of our lives.

You know, anytime — it's a bit of a reduction — but anytime people are kind of united in a in a single goal or mission, whether it's toxic or not, they are drinking, as I see it, from some sort of collective Kool-Aid.

MARK BRODIE: What was it like when you were growing up, you mentioned, you know, people had not heard of your home country, you mentioned Jonestown. Like, that seems like a tough thing to have the place you're from known for.

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Like I think for my family who is from Guyana, so my mom and her side of the family were born there, I was born in the U.S., it probably is this sort of this sort of thing that they had to kind of figure out how to deal with later in life, whereas for me, it was sort of my origin point for understanding what Guyana is and sort of understanding where it is and how it's seen by the rest of the world.

I never really was turned off or or scared by the the kind of darker elements of it. I just kind of appreciated the fact that, you know, my culture felt so invisible to the people around me, and I had this reference point to kind of make it seen by them.

MARK BRODIE: That's so interesting. Well, so did that also sort of help guide your curiosity into why people are so drawn to cults in so many ways?

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Yeah, it definitely did. For this novel, I mean, the appeal of cults to the followers is of course very, very interesting, but the thing that I really focused on was the appeal of sort of becoming that type of figure for the would-be cult leader.

So sometimes people ask, is Jim Jones the antagonist of the novel? And I say, not necessarily. What is, is the thing that creates people like Jim Jones. So with Jones, like other dangerous narcissists and megalomaniacs throughout history, there's this common narrative you hear sometimes, like, if only Adolf Hitler had been admitted to art school.

It's super reductive, but I do think there's some truth to it in that for these narcissists and and would-be false prophets, it seems to stem from this trauma or damage that they experience early in life that creates an absence that they later in life go to extreme measures to fill.

And thinking about that, that is a sort of, of course, extreme in the cases of like Jim Jones or or the way my novel is sort of handling it, but it is sort of a relatable struggle in that we all experience pains and traumas in childhood and throughout our lives that it's up to us to figure out how to deal with.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and it seems like, and please correct me if you think I'm wrong about this, that Jal kind of walks on both sides of that line, right? Like he's trying to find out about his mom, which seems like a very noble endeavor, but in the end, I don't want to give too much away, but like a lot of what he ends up talking about is not what actually happened.

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Absolutely. I mean, one of the — so I teach creative writing, obviously, and I tend to think of character in terms of craft. And so one question I've thought about is, is Jal an unreliable narrator? And I think, I mean, in a in a larger sense, I think, you know, anytime you have a first-person narrator, just like anytime you're listening to someone tell a story, there's always an aspect of unreliability, because people, and I think Jal really embodies this, people are flawed and they have blind spots.

One of Jal's big problems as I see it is that he's sort of unable to accept the unsavory, difficult truths about his life, and instead, as the novel goes along, comes to rely on these sort of pleasant lies that he's telling.

MARK BRODIE: Well, that kind of behavior strikes me as not entirely dissimilar from what we often think of as someone who's leading a cult.

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Exactly. Yeah. And, and someone who's leading a cult and then also the thing that kind of draws people to cults, which is, it is this this narrative that is digestible in one sense and also uncomplicated in another sense, and and ultimately is a is a sort of utopian vision to to the believer.

MARK BRODIE: What I find so interesting about all that is that I would imagine it's not terribly uncommon for when a family member dies that, you know, somebody is not particularly close to or maybe has a lot of questions about, they kind of go on this quest, right, to try to figure out who was this person. Maybe who is this person before I knew them or, you know, in the case of a parent, like when they were a child, that kind of thing.

But it seems like I would imagine in many cases the person actually wants to get to the truth and kind of embrace it as messy as it might be, which is not what Jal does, as you reference. He finds the truth and kind of doesn't like it, so he makes up something else.

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a — and that's a very good point. Anytime someone dies, there is a there's a number of responses to it. One is this sudden desire to know them in a way that you perhaps didn't when they were alive. And the other is a sort of, as I see it anyway, it is a sort of re-remembering of this person.

MARK BRODIE: So other than the fact that you also spent time here in your childhood, any particular reason you chose to set this in Phoenix?

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Well, I wanted — so Jal is an actor. I don't know if we've mentioned that, but he lives in Hollywood, so he lives in California. And, and I did want that his mom and his childhood to be sort of near at hand, near-ish at hand, but also distant.

And so growing up in Phoenix, you know, we always had this sense of how close California is, and — but then culturally, the two are very different. And so there was something about that proximity and that that that level of distance that I thought was was very interesting to me.

And also because Jal experiences what I did, which is there are these sort of cultural hotbeds of, you know, of Guyanese people, of the diaspora. Arizona and Phoenix in particular, at least when I was growing up, was not one of those places. And so I wanted Jal to kind of have that experience, too, where where he felt like that part of his identity was maybe a little unknown, a little invisible, and part of his impulse, I think, for telling this this lie is to sort of bring that part of him under the spotlight a little bit.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Afsheen Farhadi, a teacher of creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno. His new book is called "False Prophet." Afsheen, thank you so much.

AFSHEEN FARHADI: Thank you so much, Mark. It was a pleasure speaking with you.