by Shida Bazyar
First published 2025
Behsad joins his communist friends in the streets of Tehran in 1979, fighting to build something new after the Shah falls. He meets Nahid, brave and sharp, and they fall in love amid the chaos. Ten years later they sit in their West German home with their children, listening to radio broadcasts and waiting for word from friends who disappeared when the mullahs took control. Their daughter Laleh travels back to Iran with Nahid in 1999, discovering a Tehran that bears no resemblance to her childhood memories. She learns family secrets between visits to beauty salons. In 2009, Laleh's brother Mo cares more about his friend's broken heart than the student protests happening around him in Germany. Then the Green Revolution erupts in Iran and everything changes. Four decades, two countries, one family caught between the desire for freedom and the weight of exile.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, political-thriller, activism, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Tehran, West Germany
Period: 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009
266 pages · Paperback · Scribe UK