Walter Archer’s penchant for logic, his ability to let reason trump all, was a testament to Roya’s own good judgment. Walter dried the dishes, his gaze on the kitchen towel and its print of a yellow chick holding an umbrella. She said it as if she were seeing the dentist or a therapist or the pushy refrigerator salesman who had promised her and Walter a lifetime guarantee of cold milk and crisp vegetables and unspoiled cheese if only they would buy this brand-new model. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on-to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England-until, 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? Excerpt For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.Ī few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts-a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer-handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry-and she loses her heart at once.

Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink. Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea-extolled by the Wall Street Journal as a “moving tale of lost love” and by Shelf Awareness as “a powerful, heartbreaking story”-explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.

The stationery shop of tehran book