The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

Book: The Stationery Shop of Tehran
Author: Marjan Kamali
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, War
Published by: Simon & Schuster in 2019
Page Count: 305
Other books by the Author: Together Tea (2013), The Lion Women of Tehran (2024)

Book Review:

This book is going to stay with me forever, Roya, Bahman, Badri, Ali, Walter, and Zari, all of these characters are someone I knew in past life, so close, so bonded, I don’t know if I would be able to talk about Iran, war, tragedy, or lost love without reminiscing this story and these characters. It is a perfect book about love, loss, hope, betrayal, kindness, past, and how that past haunts your present, which remains stuck to you like a strand of hair, you keep shrugging it off when it touches you anywhere but when you look for it, it’s not there.

Roya and Zari are the daughters of a government clerk and a liberal father, who constantly remind his daughters that they are made for bigger things in life. In 1953 Iran, when Mossadegh is the Prime Minister and Shah’s supporters are planning a coup, a bud of a love story starts to bloom in a flower. Roya’s most peaceful and happiest escape was the Stationery Shop, whose owner is the very kind Mr. Fakhri who always gives Roya Persian poetry and translations to read. This naïve, poetry lover lost her heart, when one day a handsome young boy walked into that bookstore, he came and went with a rush of wind, but that was enough for Roya to know and it gradually became like a cold breeze for Roya on a hot summer day.

A war, a love story, two hearts, two families, buried pasts, and a questionable future, this book serves it all. Flipping through pages and freezing on some lines runs parallel while reading this book. As much as the protagonists were described, their emotions and decisions, the author didn't fail to give the deserving part to her supporting characters. 

First love, its joys, its secrets, its pangs of jealousy, the butterflies, the sensuality, the effort to look good, solidifying trust, melting away the insecurities, the panic of being married, the excitement of being together forever, the belief of a future as a couple, the heartbreak when it didn’t happen. And the ‘not happening’ was not gradual like falling in love, it was like hugging the favorite person and someone snatching them away, the betrayal and heartbreak came faster than that gush of wind when he walked into the stationery shop that first day.

Love is impalpable and yet it so smoothly touches us beneath our skin, through our hearts, and fills up in our veins, to a limit that after a point the love you have for that person becomes so vivid in your eyes, smile, and even your breath. Imagine having that feeling, living that life, to love and be loved, and it all just comes to ash in the blink of an eye, but you have to live, you have to live through it all, and endure even more. All because someone else was threatened by your love, a country was in unrest, and your destiny was not it, no matter how desperately and deeply you want it to be. Roya and Bahman were those two people, who sacrificed their love at the onset of the 1953 Iranian Coup. 

Six decades later, settled in New York with her husband Walter, Roya has long ago escaped the pangs of her first heartbreak, she was struck with even a bigger loss in her twenties, but one day, one shop, one person and it all came rushing back to her, like a flood throwing open the gates of a closed heart. With trembling hands and one foot in front of another, Roya decides she wants an answer to what happened that day, sixty years earlier, on the streets of Iran.

The book will feel like a hug at first, someone snatching that hug and with it a part of your heart, in mid, and a warm embrace by the end. Overall, it is an absolute masterpiece that has completely and bewitchingly got my heart. Kamali's writing style is enthralling, she kept the story at a normal pace, neither hastening nor slowing down, as if she knew her readers would take a minute to digest what they just read. As I finished reading this book by Marjan Kamali, I knew in my heart, that I was going to read all of her previous and future works soon. 

About the Author: Born in 1971, Kamali is an Iranian-American novelist and Author. Her books have been published in more than 20 languages. Marjan has completed her graduation in English Literature from the University of California, Berkley, MBA from Columbia University, and MCA from New York University. 

External Links: IG Book Review