"El flamant Premi d´Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, Quim Monzó, recomana 'Call me zebra' d'Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. — EMPORDA

"Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a new breed of erudite, conceptually ambitious authors...Above and beyond the sociopolitical undercurrent, Call Me Zebra is about the dead we love and communicate with each time we open a book (or access a memory).” —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Van der Vliet Oloomi resists the standard redemption arc, infusing her protagonist with a darkly comic neuroticism." -THE NEW YORKER

"Ferociously intelligent.... With intricacy and humor, Van der Vliet Oloomi relays Zebra’s brainy, benighted struggles as a tragicomic picaresque whose fervid logic and cerebral whimsy recall the work of Bolaño and Borges." --Liesl Schillinger, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Van der Vliet Oloomi captures the shattered identity of the refugee and the immigrant, the way that literature becomes a lifeline in exile: a movable home, a network of dissent, a genealogy beyond national borders."- LA REVIEW OF BOOKS

“This fierce meditation, a heady review of literature and philosophy as well as a love story, is a tour de force from the author of Fra Keeler that many will read and reread." —LIBRARY JOURNAL

"Van der Vliet Oloomi has delivered a slightly screwball novel with a quirky, irrepressible narrator, full of literary theories, boundless curiosity, and biting humor." THE NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW, "5 Hot Books"

"This is a brilliant, demented, and bizarro book that demands and rewards all the attention a reader might dare to give it." KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

“(Don’t)… miss the realization that the beauty of Zebra’s character lies in the very fact that literature is hyperbolic. At any given time, there is always a character crying out; a war announcing itself; a family getting torn apart; a relationship ending. This threat of an imminently catastrophic dissolution keeps Zebra hooked to the books she carries with her and also makes her a magnetically passionate character worth following." — Bomb Magazine

“Filled with literature, art and sex, Call Me Zebra is rambling and picaresque as quirky and funny as its rambunctious narrator. Its many digressions into philosophy and history are not obstacles--they are stepping-stones. Call Me Zebra is a grand story…” — Shelf Awareness

"Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s novel about a difficult, funny, and troubled woman is at its heart a novel about the powerful role of literature in self-discovery." THE MILLIONS, "Self Discovery and the Limitations of Literature: On CALL ME ZEBRA"

“This is a sharp and genuinely fun picaresque, employing humor and poignancy side-by-side to tell an original and memorable story.” — Publishers Weekly

"What Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts did for gender and sexuality, Call Me Zebra does for the experience of exile, deftly threading the narrative with theory while also using theory to pull the reader in. Though Call Me Zebra happens to be fiction, both books are stuffed with complex ideas made irresistible and lyric. Both symbiotically use philosophy to clarify and amplify the human story. " LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOK

"Hearken ye fellow misfits, migrants, outcasts, squint-eyed bibliophiles, library-haunters and book stall-stalkers: Here is a novel for you." —WALL STREET JOURNAL

"This is a miss your stop on the subway and ignore your to-do list kind of book." LITHUB, 15 Books You should Read this February

“There are so many worthy books from so many incredible authors, and in February, there are 17 books that are particularly worth your time.” — Bitch Media