Review of The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

*The Lion Women of Tehran* by Marjan Kamali (2024). Published by Gallery Books.

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

The Lion Women of Tehran was a book I really wanted to read when it came out, but because I was in the middle of my my master’s thesis, working five jobs, and preparing to move abroad (which never happened), I didn’t have the time to really read this at the beginning of 2024.

Although this blog post is coming out much later than when I wrote it, because of the sheer amount of backlog I have to publish due to my new unemployed status, I finally read this book during the night of the election. I was sitting on the couch with my sister until midnight, and we were so sure of how things were going to be. I was reading the book and finished it about two hours in, when the world we thought was going to happen was obviously not going to.

Enough on that, but I read through the entire book that night. It was bittersweet, as it was such a good book, but we were horrified at what was to come in our world as Iranian American women.

Let’s get into the review—I know introductions can get a bit long, so I don’t want to ramble too much before we get into the actual book review.

Two best friends in Tehran find their paths splitting, then converging in the lead up to the revolution.

This is a historical fiction novel, so if you want to go into this book fully understanding the context of what is happening, I highly suggest reading up on 1950s Iran, Mossadegh, and the build up that led to the end of the Shah’s regime. I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to understand the story, but it will help contextualize a lot of the plot elements.

The novel opens in 1950s Iran, when the main character, Ellie, lives a comfortable life. She’s pretty high up on the social ladder in Iran as a child due to her family’s economic status, but when her father suddenly passes away, her mother and she is forced to move into a poorer section of Tehran.

Ellie is not close with her mother, who comes across as not the greatest character at times through Ellie’s eyes. At her new school she meets a girl named Homa, who is from the neighborhood and from a radical family when it comes to politics, and the girls become inseparable throughout their time together.

It’s at Homa’s house that Ellie learns to cook from the girls’ mother, and they venture through the streets of Tehran in a way unlike anything Ellie has experienced before. But things change when she comes home and finds her mother in bed with her uncle, and then they get married.

Ellie leaves behind Homa, and she grows up without seeing her beloved friend. Her mother disapproved of the girl to begin with, and winds of change are happening throughout the city and Iran itself. As Ellie grows up and attends an elite high school, she almost doesn’t remember her old friend—until she shows up, much to Ellie’s embarrassment.

This sets the course of the rest of the novel, which progresses through their college years and into Ellie’s immigration to the United States. Iran is set to drastically change due to the rise of the revolutionary ideals, but we see it through the lens of these two girls’ friendship as they become older and realize the world is not so kind to women, especially those with radical opinions.

This story reminded me of Sanaz Toossi’s play Wish You Were Here, which is set during the revolution, and I liked this book a lot because it focuses on female stories in Iran during this time. We know what happened after this, to women as a whole, but this gives life to how women were very critical of the Shah even in elite circles.

Overall Thoughts

As I just mentioned, I really liked this novel and found it to be a powerful way to humanize Iranian women now, and during this time. We need stories like these more than ever, and I’m so proud that Iranian American women writers are finally getting the spotlight and the time they deserve in mainstream publishing.

The writing in this book is so gorgeous, and I thought the characterization and their motivations were done brilliantly. There’s a massive betrayal (this is in the synopsis, so not much of a spoiler) that unearths everything you think is going to happen, and I was on my toes after this point because of the period nad how dangerous it was.

I say if you have the opportunity and haven’t picked this one up yet, definitely add it to your reading lists or book club agendas. I want to buy a physical copy for my library sometime in the future, when I am a bit more employed, because I was truly touched by this book and its characters.

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