And as Aria’s own life is altered forever, Iran enters the revolution. We stay close to Aria and her perspective but the book is also divided into sections named after her three mothers Zahra, Fereshteh, and Mehri, and we see how each forms her and changes her life.Īdjacent to Aria’s personal timeline is the story of Iran, a nation going through tumultuous changes. He names her Aria, after the word for song, even though this is usually a boy’s name in his country.įrom there the book follows Aria through childhood into teenage hood and young adulthood. A little girl who is almost immediately abandoned but then found by a man who chooses to raise her as his own. The book begins with the birth of a baby in Iran. I knew very little about the novel so it was quite lovely to find myself immersed in a story I might not have chosen on my own. I picked it up from the library as part of my Writers Fest Challenge, as Nazanine Hozar will be speaking at the Festival as one of the New Voices. The novel's heart-pounding conclusion takes us through the brutal revolution that installs the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader, even as Aria falls in love and becomes a young mother herself.Aria – Nazanine Hozar (Alfred A. Through Aria, we meet three very different women who are fated to mother the lost child: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, wife of the kind-hearted soldier wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who welcomes Aria into her home, adopting her as an heir and finally, the mysterious, impoverished Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden. Nazanine Hozar's stunning debut takes us inside the Iranian revolution - but seen like never before, through the eyes of an orphan girl. He snatches up the child, and forever alters his own destiny and that of the little girl, whom he names Aria. Curious, he searches for the source, and to his horror comes upon a newborn baby girl abandoned by the side of the road and encircled by ravenous dogs. One night, a humble driver in the Iranian army is walking home through a neighbourhood in Tehran when he hears a small, pitiful cry. It is the early 1950s in a restless Iran, a country powerful with oil wealth but unsettled by class and religious divides and by a larger world hungry for its resources. A Doctor Zhivago of Iran." (Margaret Atwood, on Twitter) "Here comes a sweeping saga about the Iranian revolution as it explodes - told from the ground level and the centre of chaos. a poised and dramatic historical novel with contemporary relevance." (John Irving)
"Aria is a feminist odyssey, about a girl in a time of intolerance as the revolution in Iran is breaking out. This extraordinary, gripping debut is a rags-to-riches-to-revolution tale about an orphan girl's coming of age in Iran.
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