Aria

'A Doctor Zhivago of Iran' Margaret Atwood
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Aria is a girl who doesn't belong, left as a foundling in an alleyway in a poor district of Tehran on a winter's night in the early 1950s. She is found by a young man working for the army and, over the next twenty-five years, through her childhood and young adulthood, we meet three very different women who are fated to mother the lost child: reckless and self-absorbed Zahra, wife of the kind-hearted soldier; wealthy and compassionate Fereshteh, who welcomes Aria into her home, adopting her as an heir; and finally, the mysterious, impoverished Mehri, whose connection to Aria is both a blessing and a burden.

The novel's heart-pounding conclusion takes us through the brutal revolution that installs the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader, even as Aria falls in love and becomes a young mother herself.
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'A feminist odyssey' John Irving