The Stationery Shop of Tehran

In this poignant and lovingly told story of lost love set primarily in Iran in the early 1950s, Roya, a bookish teenager whose more liberated parents encourage her studies, recalls her slowly brewing romance with Bahman, a smart and political boy she meets in the local stationery shop, which also sells poetry and novels in translation. When Bahman declares his marital intentions to Roya but then fails to show up at the appointed time in the town square where a violent protest erupts, Roya is left wondering what happened. Sixty years later, Roya, now living in the USA with her husband Walter, locates Bahman in a nursing home and visits him to get some answers. Set at a time of protests among the supporters of the democratic regime, the Shah, and the communists, The Stationery Shop immerses us in the poetry, sounds, smells, and tastes of a country with an ancient history that has been through many transformations but where family, tradition, and class still matter.