BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: The Lion Women of Tehran (Marjan Kamali, author)
Historical Fiction, Tehran and New York City, 1950 to 2022, friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, mother-daughter, revolution, education of women, women's rights, imprisonment.
Marjan Kamali’s story of friendship, betrayal, forgiveness and upheaval, set in Tehran in two periods of that nation’s history, will make you ache, then infuriate and ultimately uplift. The Lion Women of Tehran is a story of two women who grow up in Tehran in widely different economic and political circumstances yet become devoted friends despite their differences. It is a story of the painful missteps of youth, betrayal, growth and forgiveness.
We are introduced to the women as children in the 1950s in Tehran. Ellie lives a life of privilege until the death of her father at age 7, when she and her mother are relocated to an impoverished section of the city. There Ellie meets Homa, and the two become fast friends. Homa enjoys an intact and loving family and Ellie, alone with her bitter and depressed mother, envies Homa’s family. The two girls excel at school and vie for top-of-class status. The friends are torn apart when Ellie’s mother remarries and Ellie and her mother return to a life of privilege.
The friends are reunited a decade later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s posh girls’ school in their final year; they both successfully complete examinations for admission to Tehran University. Ellie falls in love with Mehrdad and plans to marry when she completes her university studies. Homa vows never to marry and yearns to become a lawyer to right the many injustices she has observed women and the poor suffer in Iranian society. In a horrific slow-motion series of events, Ellie discloses information that lands Homa in prison. Ellie’s guilt and shame threaten to overwhelm her. Months later, when Homa is released, Homa’s life is forever altered and the two friends are again estranged.
Political unrest in Tehran festers as Shah Reza Pahlavi’s misdeeds mount and civil unrest grows. Mehrdad secures an opportunity for post-graduate research work in New York City and he and Ellie, resigned to childlessness, relocate there. Ellie struggles for footing in the new city but slowly makes her way. When the Shah flees Tehran, a new fundamentalist regime assumes power and women’s rights are sharply curtailed. In 1981, Ellie receives an unexpected letter from Homa, requesting that Ellie shelter Homa’s teenage daughter, Bahar, in the U.S. away from the growing unrest in Tehran. Once again, Ellie and Homa join forces, this time across continents.
Kamali delivers a story rich in loving and heartbreaking details about Iran, its people, its food, and its history. The author brings the history of Iran in the mid-to-late 20th century vividly to life through the story of two women who nurture and sustain a friendship through betrayals, absences, imprisonment and distance. The Lion Women of Tehran is an literary and uplifting example of the power of historical fiction to educate us all by giving us a window into other rich and complex cultures; we all can relate to the affirming power of friendship, wherever it may hatch.
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