Reviews 277 Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020, XXIV+312 S. ISBN 978-1-5036-1195-5. Reviewed by Philip Bockholt, Universität Münster, Münster, Deutschland, philip.bockholt@uni-muenster.de https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2024-0012 Mana Kia’s book, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before National- ism, was published by Stanford University Press in 2020. The work discusses issues related to identity, memory, and a sense of belonging in 18th-century Iran and (Mughal) India. The book is comprised of five main sections: an introduction, two core chapters titled “place” and “origin,” a comprehensive conclusion, and a shorter “coda.” In this approximately 200-page exploration, Kia analyzes taẕkira works, or biographical dictionaries, from Iran and India that were compiled between the late Safavid period and the early 19th century. She investigates how the significance of place and origin, as reflected in the entries on specific individuals, fits into the broader narrative of memory and identification. The sources Kia engages with include Āẕar-i Bigdilī’s Ātashkada, Ḥazīn-i Lāhījī’s Taẕkirat al-Muʿāṣirīn, and Vālah Dāghistānī’s Riyāż al-Shuʿarāʾ, which she introduces in a section titled “dramatis personae” at the outset of the book. Kia’s approach to this topic is distinctly personal as she incorporates her own background into her approach. Working in the USA, Kia draws on her maternal family’s Iranian heritage and their older roots that reach out to India and Burma. While it is commendable when scholars express their personal perspectives on their research, it becomes evident as one delves deeper into Persianate Selves that a more nuanced detachment from the concept of being “Persianate,” as it relates to one’s own heritage, might have enhanced the analytical value of this work. Kia’s engagement with the concept of Iranian nationalism from a personal perspective extends to a questioning of the role of the Persian language in defining Persian(ate) identity and its significance before the era of modern nationalism. By distancing herself from the Iranian nationalism of the 20th and 21st centuries, heavily pro- moted by the former Pahlavi dynasty and based on a Persian identity exclusive to the people of Iran proper, she explores what being Persian(ate) meant before modern nationalism. She also inquires about the meanings of its stories, poetry, aesthetic sense, and, most crucially, its forms of perception, expression, and behav- ior – its adab – in an earlier period. Furthermore, Kia also asks whether it is possi- ble to find, in that meaning, the resources for decolonizing oneself and envisioning a future beyond the heritage of European colonial modernity (3–4). Against the backdrop of Iranian nationalism, which she argues is rooted in European colonialism, Kia promotes the term “Persianate” as originally coined by