num_pages: 312
description: A poignant heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Teaextolled by the Wall Street Journal as a moving tale of lost love and by Shelf Awareness as a powerful heartbreaking storyexplores loss reconciliation and the quirks of fate.Roya a dreamy idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhris neighborhood stationery shop stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.Then Mr. Fakhri with a keen instinct for a budding romance introduces Roya to his other favorite customerhandsome Bahman who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumis poetryand she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.A few short months later on the eve of their marriage Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence eruptsa result of the coup detat that forever changes their countrys future. In the chaos Bahman never shows. For weeks Roya tries desperately to contact him but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart she moves onto college in California to another man to a life in New Englanduntil more than sixty years later an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?
language: English
title: The Stationery Shop
publisher: Gallery Books