From the author of The Stationery Shop of Tehran, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming ‘lion women.’

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But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures.

But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

My Review

I confess I cried and not just at the end. Real tears running down my face. I found this book so emotional, even more so because much of it actually happened. The two main characters – Ellie and Homa – are fictitious, but their struggles are real. I remember well when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power from the Shah, and the large numbers of Iranians who came to the UK.

Ellie’s family are wealthy, but when her father dies, she and her mother are forced to move downtown, where she meets Homa at her new school. Homa is brave and feisty, but Ellie’s mother doesn’t approve of the friendship, because of Homa’s lower status. Then Ellie’s circumstances change and she is back in the privileged world of her early childhood.

Soon she and Homa lose touch, only to meet up again years later. They instantly rekindle their friendship, but their worlds are still miles apart – Homa being fiercely political, while Ellie just wants to get married and have children.

As we follow the women through three decades of unrest in Iran, we can see how their paths will become more divergent, but will it see the end of their friendship forever?

I can’t express how amazing this book is. The way in which women’s rights were systematically stripped away in Iran was both shocking and horrific. Women could be beaten for showing a strand of hair that slipped out of their hijab, or any ‘forbidden’ flesh. The clock was turned back not decades, but centuries.

But it’s the personal stories that had the deepest effect on me. This is a book that everyone should read.

As an aside, I was fascinated by the things that Ellie found so exciting in New York, like an orange powder you dissolve in water to make a drink, fish fingers, TV dinners etc – the sort of highly processed foods we now believe are responsible for our declining health. So interesting.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Marjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she received her MBA from Columbia University and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop of Tehran and Together Tea. Marjan is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She lives with her husband and two children in the Boston area.