2) In the last chapter, Khomeini, while landing in Tehran, is described as wearing a WHITE turban. 1) In the first chapter set in 1958-1959, a political group called Fadaian Khalgh is mentioned. It is full of historical errors and inaccuracies. Overrated and Heavily Inaccurate and Biased Account of Iranian HistoryĪs one commentator pointed out, Aria is nothing but a “mediocre soap with the noise turned up”. *Many thanks to Nazazine Hozar, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.* Aria herself is a strange girl but perhaps it is all due to being unloved in her childhood and the suffering that fell upon her. I cannot say I found characters likeable, except for Bakhtiar who finds the baby and decides to bring her up. I think a reader with some knowledge of the place and times will find this novel much more compelling. On the other hand, the social and historical background sounded intriguing despite the inability to comprehend all niceties. I spent a lot of time googling the names and trying to understand the religious complications in Iran at that time, and it was not something that allowed me to go with the flow with this book. (Aug.The story of a baby girl with a boy's name, Aria, unwanted and left to perish after her birth, was interesting, however, the fact that I know almost next to nothing about Iran as it was in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, until the Revolution, stopped me from enjoying the plot as much as I wanted. Hozar expertly weaves people in and out of Aria’s life and crafts a living, breathing environment for her heroine to inhabit, and brings things to a charged climax. As Tehran grows more violent, Aria realizes Hamlet is in love with her, and she must navigate his affections while they both become entangled in the growing uprising against the Shah. Years pass, and Aria, along with childhood friends Hamlet and Mitra, completes high school and enrolls in university, where she crosses paths with disciples of Ayatollah Khomeini, who they claim will create a better Iran.
After Aria contracts trachoma at age six, Behrouz arranges to send her to live with Zahra’s former employer, the wealthy Fereshteh, who takes in the girl as her own daughter, enrolls her in school, and forces her to visit the home of the less-fortunate Shirazi family to teach the household’s children to read. Abandoned by her mother in Tehran as a baby in 1953, Aria spends her early years raised by a military driver, Behrouz, and his abusive wife, Zahra, who often locks the girl outside and denies her food. Hozar’s towering bildungsroman debut, already an international bestseller, spans three decades, capturing the maturation of the novel’s protagonist, Aria, amid the Iranian Revolution.
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