Description
Book SynopsisGrowing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, 11-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Bob Dylan cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and twin have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for her lost mother and sister, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied.
All her life Saba has been taught that 'fate is in the blood,' which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. Thus, as time passes and Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life - a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in post-revolutionary Iran, her sister's life - as Saba envisions it - gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.
Filled with a colourful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose to form a wholly original story about the importance of controlling your own fate.
Trade ReviewThere's a kaleidoscopic quality to Dina Nayeri's prose, evoking the beat of Eastern storytelling, while its cadences remain resolutely American... The novel's message, however, is universal: we must do all we can to control our own fates. * Daily Mail *
Infused with the prose of nostalgia, revelling in the simplicity of a rural culture that is gradually being eroded by ruthless oppression. Skilled writers such as Nayeri, Khaled Hosseini (
The Kite Runner) and Hisham Matar (
Anatomy of a Disappearance) play a crucial role in making the personal political. * The Age *
This ambitious novel set in northern Iran in the decade after the 1979 revolution contains not a teaspoon but a ton of history, imagination, and longing. * Publishers Weekly *
It's hard to believe
A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is Nayeri's first novel as colorful phrases dance throughout this epic tale of grief and love, memory and myth. * Baltimore Times *
A gripping tale of female oppression. * Australian Woman's Weekly *
