The Lion Women of Tehran
Marjan Kamali, 2024
Historical fiction Contemporary fiction
A woman in New York receives a letter from the Iranian friend she has not spoken to in seventeen years, and the past returns.
Feels like longing and tenderness. About friendship, memory and war.
A page from the book
What a childhood friendship teaches you about the size of the world.
As girls, we’d sat on the same elementary school bench in downtown Tehran. Together we scratched out hopscotch grids in our neighborhood alley and raced to school with satchels bouncing against our hips. With Homa, I had zigzagged through the mazes of the Grand Bazaar and shared ice cream sandwiches and dreams for the kind of women we’d become. In her stone kitchen, I learned to cook. With her hand in mine, I jumped over the largest bonfires. When we’d hiked up Alborz Mountain and seen Tehran laid out beneath us, it felt like the world could be entirely ours. Marjan Kamali.Marjan Kamali was born in Turkey to Iranian parents and grew up in Tehran, Turkey, Germany, and the United States.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Lion Women of Tehran like?
- Feels like longing and tenderness. About friendship, memory and war.
- What should I read after The Lion Women of Tehran?
- If you liked The Lion Women of Tehran, try The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller), In the Likely Event (Rebecca Yarros) and The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan).
A taste of the feed
To know someone so well that sight becomes optional.
I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
The Song of Achilles · Madeline Miller
What an agreement can't do: make two people stop belonging to each other.
He wasn’t mine. I wasn’t his. That was the agreement we’d made. And yet he was always mine. I was always his.
In the Likely Event · Rebecca Yarros
A place at the table, handed down whether or not you asked.
My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club.
The Joy Luck Club · Amy Tan
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