The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree — Shokoofeh Azar

A grieving family flees Tehran after the Islamic Revolution in this novel of “magical realism with a Persian twist” translated from Farsi (The Guardian, UK).
 
When their home in Tehran is burned to the ground by zealots, killing their thirteen-year-old daughter Bahar, a once-prominent family flees to a small village. There, they hope to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar's mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness.
 
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Iranian novelist Shokoofeh Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime.
 
“[Azar's] book is a great journey. It moves places and it moves us as readers, in an emotional and intellectual sense.” -- Robert Wood, The Los Angeles Review of Books