Golden Years

In 2012, publisher Oscar van Gelderen organized an exhibition in Manhattan involving Iranian street artists and invited them to New York to perform. During the show, the Iranian punk band 'The Yellow Dog' played their music. One member of the band was named Ali Eskandarian, an artist who had attracted the attention of Van Gelderen. Ali immediately sent a copy of his unpublished manuscript 'Golden Years' to the publisher and a beautiful friendship was born. The novel was described by Ali as a semi-autobiographical novel. In November 2013, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ali was assassinated. Today, 'Golden Years' can be found in almost any library. The novel tells the story of young Iranian immigrants, authors, musicians, and skaters in New York. Set in the first decade of the 21st century in the cities of New York, Teheran, and Dallas, 'Golden Years' is a novel perfumed with spirited decadence and excess. It tells the story of a group of Iranian musicians in their twenties, with Ali in his 30's, who are in thralled by the great American beats and have visions of Ancient Assyrian Futurism. Hungry and poor, high, and hopping from bed to bed and lover to lover, the characters in 'Golden Years' are romantic exiles living with rock n roll as their religion.