Book Review: The Stationery Shop of Tehran
A sweet story of young love that spans countries and six decades
Look at love
How it tangles
With the one fallen in love
Look at spirit
How it fuses with earth
Giving it new life
~Rumi
In this year of COVID, as I try to make peace with cancelled travel plans and graduation ceremonies, reading has been the unexpected bright spot that has helped transport me to places far from home.
To my list of books by authors from countries that I haven’t yet visited (and doesn’t seem like I will anytime soon), I just added the beautiful novel “The Stationery Shop of Tehran,” by Marjan Kamali.
Once upon a time…
Set in 1953 in Tehran with the main protagonist, Roya, a bookish schoolgirl who frequents a neighborhood bookstore, the tender story about young love is painstakingly created with believable characters who live and breathe through a tumultuous time in Iran’s history without becoming stereotypes for a country or a generation.
Roya meets Bahman, a young man who wants to change the world, in the stationery shop. Juxtaposed against Roya’s meek view of…
