In conversation with Dinaw Mengestu, moderated by Carol Fitzgerald, at Church of the Redeemer, 12:10 pm to 1:00 pm
About the author
Marjan Kamali is the best-selling author of The Lion Women of Tehran, The Stationery Shop, and Together Tea. Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, she spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. Kamali is the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award. She lives with her husband in the Boston area. They have two children.
MFOB featured book: The Lion Women of Tehran
Following the release of her best-selling novel, The Stationery Shop, award-winning author Marjan Kamali was nearly 100 pages into writing her next book when the pandemic began. Scrolling Instagram, she saw posts from a woman in Iran who was her friend – not just on social media, but once upon a time in real life. They had been best friends in elementary school in Tehran, playing together every day and sharing their dreams of who they’d grow up to be.
But, growing up during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, they also shared fears that come with being young girls in a religious, autocratic state. Marjan spent many nights in the basement as bombs fell outside. Every time she made it back upstairs, she was deeply aware of the chance she had been given to live. And when her family left Tehran – in a rush, with the kettle still on the stove, without saying goodbye to her best friend – she had that same feeling of being the one who got away. At age 10, she arrived in New York City with her best friend still in Iran – knowing she had to live doubly hard for both of them.
Marjan started to think about how the friends we make when we are young shape us. How their influence on our lives lasts even if the friendship doesn’t. And how friendship break-ups are just as heart-wrenching as romantic ones. She knew she had to write the story of a broken friendship in The Lion Women of Tehran.
