On the other hand, the social and historical background sounded intriguing despite the inability to comprehend all niceties. I spent a lot of time googling the names and trying to understand the religious complications in Iran at that time, and it was not something that allowed me to go with the flow with this book. Nazanine Hozar's stunning debut gives us an unusually intimate view of a momentous time, through the eyes of a young woman coming to terms with the mysteries of her own past and future.The story of a baby girl with a boy's name, Aria, unwanted and left to perish after her birth, was interesting, however, the fact that I know almost next to nothing about Iran as it was in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, until the Revolution, stopped me from enjoying the plot as much as I wanted.
The novel's heart-pounding, explosive finale sees the Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal regime seize power-even as Aria falls in love and becomes a mother herself. Over the next two decades, the orphan girl acquires three mother figures whose secrets she will learn only much later: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, who abuses her wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who adopts her and mysterious Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden.Ī university education opens a new world to Aria, and she is soon caught up in the excitement and danger of the popular uprising against the Shah that sweeps through the streets of Tehran. He snatches up the child and takes her home, naming her Aria-the first step on an unlikely path from deprivation to privilege.
One night, an illiterate army driver hears the pitiful cry of a baby abandoned in an alley and menaced by ravenous wild dogs.
The government is unpopular and corrupt and under foreign sway. It is the 1950s in a restless Iran, a country rich in oil but deeply divided by class and religion. SHORTLISTED FOR THE AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARDĪn extraordinary, cinematic saga of rags to riches to revolution that follows an orphan girl coming of age in Iran at a time of dramatic upheaval SHORTLISTED FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE
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