The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee was a sweeping and beautiful novel about the life of a woman living through 3 successive revolutions in Iran. I didn’t realize it was a translation until after I’d read it, and the prose absolutely does not give it away. Poetic and beautiful, the writing is captivating. The characters are, while not always likeable, well-developed and painfully real in their hypocrisy and selfishness. Massoumeh, a bright student but overall normal teenage girl, growing up in pre-revolutionary Tehran with two older stalwartly traditional brothers, a younger […]