Silenced Whispers

A 2024 NEW YORK BOOK FESTIVAL HONORARY MENTIONWhile other Iranian girls of the early twentieth century cook, sew, and hope for marriage, Gohar climbs trees, reads books, plays tar, and dreams of escaping her forsaken desert town. But when her forbidden correspondence with a non-Muslim boy is discovered, fear of banishment forces the fatherless Gohar to welcome the protection of Saleh Mirza, a powerful nobleman. At 14, she marries his choice of husband, a 55-year-old politician-expecting to enter her marital home in a white chador and leave it in a white shroud.But fate takes her to Tehran, where she is dazzled by the electric lights and gramophones but appalled by the misery, poverty, corruption, and foreign meddling. Endangering her life and marriage, she joins the reformists while secretly idolizing Aslan, a mysterious Russian allied with the Iranian nationalists.Then Russia invades northern Iran, and the country erupts. In the chaos of war, does a married Iranian Muslim have a future with a Russian Christian hunted by his own government? Or does their story, like so many in Iran, end in blood and tear?