This is by Marjan Kamali; it was published in 2019; and my audio-version was very nicely read by Mozhan Marno. It's a while since I've read anything Iranian, and I thought the topic might fit in nicely with The Bookshop (not so much, as it turns out).

It's the story of star-crossed lovers. In the Iran of the early 1950s, Roya meets Bahman. They're still teenagers, they're both idealistic and literature-loving, and they fall in love. Their romance is facilitated by Ali Fakhri, who runs a shop selling stationery and books, and on the side does his bit for society by passing on political material, and secretly aiding youngsters swap love letters.

What's interesting?

Well, the political and social background is depicted quite well in the early part of the book. This is the period leading up to the 1953 ousting of elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (a move that was driven and backed by the US and the UK). The fracturing of society into pro- and anti-Mossadegh elements; the increasingly inflamed atmosphere of unrest, regularly culminating in acts of violence; the tension between an essentially conservative society and the inroads made by young people's enthusiasm for Western culture (we see our protagonists frequenting ice-cream parlours and learning to dance the tango) -- all this is well done.

Also enjoyable is the wonderful depiction of Iranian food, which plays a role throughout the novel. Jewelled rice, anyone? And here's Roya, now in America, missing her native food: "Chicken marinated in lime with saffron nestled into basmati rice sprinkled with slivers of almonds and barberries... Pomegranate and walnut khoresh. Fried eggplants with tomatoes, small sour grapes, and meat served with rice. Thick aush soup with noodles and greens and beans. Her mother’s ghormeh sabzi stew. Grape leaf dolmehs stuffed with ground beef and herbs, wrapped by hand and simmered with cardamom..."


All the photos were taken in Tehran, 2000

But there was a lot that just didn't work for me in this novel (and beware spoilers in the following paragraphs).

Roya and Bahman are driven apart by Badri, Bahman's mother. It turns out that the Ali Fakhri who runs the stationery shop (and who we thought was a good guy) seduced Badri when she was a very young and poor woman, and then abandoned her, despite her pregnancy, because her lowly social class did not conform to his parents' ambitions for his marriage. She carries out her own abortion, but eventually -- somehow -- goes on to become the wife of an engineer, thus rocketing up the social ladder. Struggling to conceive again, she doesn't have Bahman until many other babies have died or been stillborn, and this sad life has made her mentally ill and unstable. Desperate to attach her only son to a young woman with higher status -- so that he won't slide back down the ladder she ascended at such cost -- she suborns Ali Fakhri, under threat of suicide, to alter the letters the lovers are exchanging. He shows up where Roya is waiting vainly in the square for Bahman, but by this time, protests are gathering, there is violence, and he is shot dead.

Both Roya and Bahman end up thinking the other one has changed his/her mind; both go on to marry different people; and both regret their youthful lost love to the end of their days.

Both, at different points, also go to live in the US. And many decades later, in the very last weeks of Bahman's life, Roya finds out where he lives. He's very sick. They meet, and they realize they were tricked all those years ago. Too late now, of course, for anything except some final loving words and gestures.



I struggled with many of those plot-points:

-- I never really felt whatever it was Roya saw in Bahman.

-- I found the whole Badri plot-element unbelievable and melodramatic.

-- I didn't understand the Ali Fahkri character-arc. He remains one-dimensional and essentially incomprehensible. And when Bahman moves to the US, he eventually sets up a stationery shop -- modelled as closely as possible on Mr Fakhri's. Given that he knew the history between the shop-owner and his mother, I'm not sure this is entirely credible either.

-- Once Roya and her sister Zari have moved to the US, the narrative falls rather flat. We learn a little about being an immigrant (some of the characters harbour ridiculous prejudices about Iranian food, for example), and a little about the difficulties faced by women trying to pursue a professional career in 1950s America (especially if they're Iranian). But these elements are fairly desultory. Roya tragically loses her first child, and struggles with depression (a plot-element that is presumably aimed at making Badri's totally unhinged responses somehow more comprehensible and forgivable). But it's all a bit slow-moving and monochrome.

-- And right at the end, we have a big omniscient-author reveal. We learn that Ali Fakhri repented of his deceit towards the young lovers, and was on his way to the square to enlighten the waiting Roya about the mischief that is separating her from Bahman. This section, at odds with the form of the narrative so far, feels a bit artificial.

Not a hit for me, then. But it was an interesting reminder of the Mossadegh episode. When I used to edit translations of Iranian press material, more than 50 years after this coup, Mossadegh was still very frequently referred to. As a former CIA operative puts it: "The coup was the beginning of a sequence of tragedies that dog the US and its allies in the Middle East today."