Salar Abdoh was born in Iran and attended Wellington School in Somerset for a short time. His father was a wealthy and prominent cultural figure but at the time of the revolution in Iran, Salar’s father became a target for Islamic fundamentalists and faced execution if he remained in Iran. So, with his father and two brothers, Salar fled for the US at the age of 14.

Within six months of reaching the States, Abdoh’s father died, leaving Abdoh and his two brothers homeless in Los Angeles. The boys travelled through the US visiting New Orleans, Pennsylvania, the Bay Area and New York. Eventually, Salar received his diploma and went to Berkeley to study Near Eastern History and Literature. Upon graduating, he spent some time working with his older brother, the well-known Iranian avant-garde playwright and director Reza Abdoh. After the death of Reza from AIDS in 1995, Salar Abdoh got his Masters degree in Creative Writing at City University in New York. He now teaches at the same University and lives in New York City.

The Poet Game, written in 1999, the tale of Islamic fundamentalists planning an attack on the World Trade Center, is Salar Abdoh’s first novel and was published by Faber in July 2002. His second novel Opium was published in 2004.