Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Lion Women of Tehran
    The Lion Women of Tehran
    The Lion Women of Tehran
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Lion Women of Tehran

    Written by Marjan Kamali

    Narrated by Mozhan Navabi and Nikki Massoud

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

    In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

    Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

    But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

    Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

    Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature “evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful” (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives.

    Editor's Note

    The bonds of female friendship…

    “The Lion Women of Tehran” follows childhood best friends Ellie and Homa across decades as they take increasingly diverging paths, which strains the bonds of their relationship. Ellie eventually subscribes to a traditional and predetermined life plan, while Homa becomes an activist. This is a moving examination of female friendship and personal agency, backdropped by Iran’s tumultuous history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 2, 2024
    ISBN9781797175348
    The Lion Women of Tehran
    Author

    Marjan Kamali

    Marjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. She is the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award. She is the author of The Lion Women of Tehran, The Stationery Shop, and Together Tea. Marjan lives with her husband in the Boston area. They have two children.

    More audiobooks from Marjan Kamali

    Related to The Lion Women of Tehran

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      February’s BOOK CLUB

      Jan 5, 2023

      River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (£18.99, HB, Headline) It’s Barbados 1834 and slavery has been abolished, but former slaves must work for another six years – for free! In an act of resistance, Rachel heads off through the Caribbean and South A

      4 min read

    • Article

      'Wellness' Is A Perfect Novel For Our Age, Its Profound Sadness Tempered With Humor

      Sep 20, 2023

      Nathan Hill's stunning new novel about the stories we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time, is both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: Grieving Over Mom: No, She's Not In A 'Better Place'

      May 10, 2019

      Two days before my mother died, she was incontinent, incoherent and, with the exception of some humming, incommunicado. Dementia had swept away her ability to swallow food or water, and danger of asphyxiation was real. Nurses swabbed her dry lips wit

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Truth Is I Never Left You

      Aug 17, 2017

      The Truth Is I Never Left You
      8 min read

    • Article

      Station to Station

      Dec 3, 2020

      Station to Station
      6 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Girl On The Platform

      Apr 14, 2020

      The Girl On The Platform
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Dec 17, 2021

      My husband was a real softie with a heart of gold. He loved spoiling me on special occasions with several small gifts, as well as a main one, but long before the event he’d start asking me if I didn’t want to open one of the smaller ones. The more I

      3 min read

    • Article

      No Apologies: On Writing About My Mother’s Life

      Mar 15, 2021

      I am halfway through a first draft. On bad days, I long for the comforts of fiction: the anonymity, the deniability. The post No Apologies: On Writing About My Mother’s Life appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Like Ripe Fruit

      Nov 5, 2020

      Like Ripe Fruit
      7 min read

    • Article

      Carrot Legs

      Sep 12, 2019

      Carrot Legs
      20 min read

    • Article

      What’s In A Name?

      Dec 22, 2021

      What’s In A Name?
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Lion Women of Tehran

    5/5

    7 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Moving Story of Friendship amidst unimaginable turmoil. So beautifully narrated!