Showing results by narrator "Sylvia Lisle" in All Categories

Far removed from the picture of Tehran we glimpse in news stories, there is another, hidden city, where survival depends on an intricate network of lies and falsehoods. It is a place where Mullahs visit prostitutes, cosmetic surgeons restore girls' virginity and homemade porn is bought and sold in the bazaars. It is also the home of our eight protagonists, drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society.

This fiercely beautiful novel tells the true story of Charles Radcliffe, a Catholic nobleman who joined the short-lived Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and of Jenny, his daughter by a secret marriage. Set in the Northumbrian wilds, teeming London, and colonial Virginia - where Jenny eventually settled on the estate of the famous William Byrd of Westover - Jenny's story reveals one young woman's loyalty, passion, and courage as she struggles in a life divided between the Old World and the New.

In today's Tehran, intrigues abound and survival depends on an intricate network of falsehoods: mullahs visit prostitutes, local mosques train barely pubescent boys in crowd-control tactics, and cosmetic surgeons promise to restore girls' virginity. Navai paints an intimate portrait of those discreet recesses in a city where the difference between modesty and profanity, loyalty and betrayal, honor and disgrace is often no more than the believability of a lie.