The Lion Women of Tehran: The life-affirming BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick
Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop of Tehran, returns with a sweeping novel that spans three turbulent decades in Iran, weaving together friendship, class, betrayal and the long, complicated aftermath of choices made under pressure. It's the kind of book that stays with you long after the final page. We meet Ellie in 1950s Tehran, a seven-year-old girl whose comfortable, sheltered life collapses when her father dies unexpectedly. Suddenly transplanted to a cramped downtown flat, stuck with a mother whose grief has curdled into bitterness, Ellie is desperately lonely. Then comes Homa. Spirited, warm and wonderfully bold, Homa becomes the friend Ellie never knew she needed. The two girls cook together in Homa's stone kitchen, wander the vivid stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share a private dream of growing up to be 'lion women', fierce and free. But life, as it tends to do, intervenes. When Ellie's family regains its former social standing, she is pulled back into privilege, and Homa gradually recedes from her memory. Years pass. Then Homa reappears, suddenly and unexpectedly, in Ellie's gilded world, and nothing between them, or within them, will ever quite be the same again. Set against the mounting political upheaval of revolutionary Iran, the novel builds towards a single, devastating act of betrayal whose consequences ripple outwards across both women's lives. Acclaimed by authors including Sadeqa Johnson and Adrienne Brodeur, this is a rich, emotionally honest story about loyalty, loss and what it costs to become the person you always hoped you'd be.
- Author: Marjan Kamali
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Genre: Historical Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1398534759
- Pages: 336 pages