Kader Abdolah (which is a nom de plume) is a Persian/Dutch writer, poet and columnist born in Arak in Iran in 1954. He studied physics at Tehran University, opposed the Shah and then after the Shah's fall the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime. He fled to the Netherlands as a political refugee in 1988. His first book came out in 1993 and in 2005 he entered the Dutch bestsellers' list with "The House of the Mosque."