I think I was trying to wake up in a way as well, back here in the time before it went wrong. “I would lie in bed some nights and bite the side of my hand to make sure it was real. “When I first went to London, it was so different from here,” Maryam tells Sara. Crowther weaves those strands into a fictional fabric as rich and variegated as that of an oriental carpet. That return prompts a profound soul-searching, threatens to tear the family apart and leads to recognition and healing. She can’t understand her mother’s moodiness and eventually comes to despise her when Maryam, profoundly estranged by her London life, decides to go home. Sara, meanwhile, feels adrift after she loses her baby. In its unexpected closure, it is powerfully open-ended.Īfter Maryam shames Saeed, she comes to realize that despite the surface stability of her life in London with her patient husband, Edward, she has left her deepest self – and her love for her father’s servant, Ali – behind in Mazareh, a dusty town in northeastern Iran. Hers is a tale of violation, shame and steadfastness. In so doing, however, she abandoned her emotions. Maryam, independent and wounded, fled the macho repressiveness of Iran for London.

Perfumed with the aromas of sophisticated, cynical London and the primal, purer air of rural Iran, “The Saffron Kitchen” is ultimately Maryam’s story. Stunned by Saeed’s action, Maryam slaps the boy, setting the novel off on its rich, dynamic ride. When Sara dives in to save him, Saeed kicks her in the gut, aborting her baby. Framed by an ancient and lovely Iranian myth of a mountain that resembles a woman, it begins, almost literally, in Sara’s womb, when Saeed, Maryam’s despondent and newly orphaned nephew, jumps off a London bridge. The book crosscuts the stories of Maryam Nazar and her daughter, Sara Dean. Yasmin Crowther’s rich debut is a modest, careful fiction that celebrates family and shows in telling detail how difficult keeping a family together can be. If at first “The Saffron Kitchen” feels like a mildly exotic example of Middle Eastern chick lit, stick with it: It turns into a fine novel of cultural and generational tension. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu

The saffron kitchen by yasmin crowther