The Stationery Shop

"I happened to pick up The Stationery Shop last summer just as tensions between Iran and the U.S. were hitting a peak – and what a timely, insightful look into that country’s past and America’s role in it this book turned out to be. But it’s also a gut-wrenching love story about family secrets and misunderstandings. (On the lighter side, the vivid descriptions of traditional feasts had me running hungrily to a strip of Iranian restaurants near my Los Angeles apartment.)"