When Ellie’s father unexpectedly dies, she and her mother find their circumstances dramatically changed for the worse. There is so little money left they have to sell their beautiful home and move to a tiny apartment in downtown Tehran. It is her mother’s worst nightmare, but for 7-year-old Ellie it means meeting Homa, the girl who will be her best friend throughout their ... Read More...
Song of a Captive Bird
Remember its flight, for the bird is mortal. -Forugh Farrokhzhad I was looking forward to learning about a time and culture, far away from my own, but I never thought I’d be so thoroughly seduced by Jasmin Darznik’s debut novel, Song of a Captive Bird. It is a fictionalized account of Forugh Farrokhzhad, the first woman in Iran to defy her country’s cultural bias and ... Read More...
Equal of the Sun
There is not much historical fiction out there about sixteenth-century Iran (Persia at the time) and what there is, is about the shahs of the day. The world of women and the harem is generally written about from the stereotypical perspective of one man and hundreds of lovelies who live only to serve him. A heroine might appear but even then she is most often saved by a prince. ... Read More...
The Lemon Grove
The Lemon Grove takes place in Iran in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. Behruz Pirzad returns from America to help his family after learning that his twin brother, Ruzbeh, was injured. He suffers from post-traumatic shock and often wanders off, leaving his wife and their mother alone in their hometown of Shiraz. Ruzbeh’s wife is their childhood friend Shireen and when Ruzbeh ... Read More...
