The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree
SynopsisPlot
Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in post-revolutionary madness. Told from the wise yet innocent gaze of a young girl, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself.
Story
About this book
This novel takes place in Iran during the decade that followed the revolution of 1979. Its narrator is Bahar, a girl of thirteen who speaks from beyond death. She describes how her relatives abandon Tehran for a distant village, hoping the move will keep their lives and their freedom of thought intact. The disorder of those years reaches the countryside anyway.
Much of the emotional weight rests with Bahar's mother. After a severe loss, she begins a long and eventful search for meaning in a country turned unpredictable. The story moves between small village routines and the wider violence of the period, filtered through a narrator who is both young and no longer living. That double position lets the book stay close and distant at once.
Shokoofeh Azar writes with imagination pressed against cruelty, mixing folk tradition and the supernatural with events from the post-revolutionary years. The book looks at how a family holds on to its identity when familiar structures fall apart, and at storytelling as a ritual through which people try to make sense of harm they have suffered.
