Golestan: The Garden of Memories

This novel is a sweeping, romantic journey set against the turbulent period of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the war with Iraq that followed. A story full of emotion and twist, with sub-plots involving abuse by an unscrupulous uncle and a hypocritical mullah, revenge murder and noble suicide. This is not a story about war and revolution, it is about the resilience of people when their world crumbles. Above all it is a love story; the love for two men, but also love of family and country. The reader first joins my heroine Banu, a member of Iran's Qajar Royal family, in 1951, enjoying a privileged childhood in her grandparent's estate on the outskirts of Teheran. This idyl is tainted by abuse at the hands of her Princely relative. Despite the trauma, after she is sent away to school in England, she returns with a PhD from Cambridge. The family acquire a London base in Rutland Gate, a handy retreat for the difficult years that follow. Banu's life, like that of so many Iranians, is shattered in 1979 when revolution erupts on the streets of Teheran - which the reader experience harrowingly through Banu's eyes. Banu's first husband, the man who pulled her out of the abyss of shame she was drowning, is imprisoned, tortured and the reader sees the couple bid farewell to each other in a heartrending scene set during a clandestine meeting at Teheran's notorious Evin prison. As Banu leaves the prison, she hears the executioner's bullet and her heart shatters. Determined to survive, Banu cleverly bequeaths her estates to her faithful friend and former servant, to avoid confiscation by the new revolutionary authorities. As she is smuggled out of the country, Banu finds happiness with a second husband, a handsome doctor who, in an intriguing twist, happens to be the half-brother of her late husband and a leading figure in the group that helps people escape from Iran. The ending threatens to become an Iranian version of Dr Zhivago, after her new husband is recruited to help stabilize the situation in Iraq, and remains officially missing for decades. Reconciled to a life alone, Banu has no idea that her missing husband nearly fails to reunite with his lost love; but on the final pages the reader is treated to a tear-jerking happy ending.