From the Publisher
Nautilus Book Award winner
The BookFest Book Award winner
Foreword INDIES award finalist
Locus Award finalist
Recommended by Ms. Magazine
"Spellbinding."—Kirkus Starred Review
"Beautifully layered"—Buzzfeed
Best Books of 2021—Undomesticated
Favorite Books of 2021, San Diego Union-Tribune
"Satisfying debut"—Shelf Awareness
"Brilliant writing." —Locus Magazine
"Lush and layered"—Debutiful
"Compelling"—Entropy Magazine
Featured on CBS 8
Front page, San Diego Union-Tribune
"This stellar first novel marks the writer as an author to watch."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A Girl Called Rumi is a magical journey to a world of mystical delights, enchantment, and revelation. It's a page-turner that goes deep into the nature of reality beyond perception.”
—Deepak Chopra, MD
"I was utterly captivated by this book. In A Girl Called Rumi, activist artist and writer Ari Honarvar manages to weave potent Sufi teaching stories, a gripping mystery set in the midst of the upheaval of the Iran-Iraq War, and beautiful writing into a magic carpet that transported me from the moment I opened the book to the moment I reluctantly turned the last page. Highly recommended."
—Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Caravan of No Despair
"Ari Honarvar’s gorgeous debut novel, A Girl Called Rumi, shuttles between Iran and America as it grapples with the trauma of the Iran-Iraq war, the crackdown on female freedoms, and intergenerational conflict as well as the costs of resilience and forgiveness as children and parents are forced to make difficult decisions. This is a pulsating and culturally rich Iran seen through the eyes of its fables, its storytellers, its poetry, and its politics. In delicate and meditative prose, Honarvar takes her unforgettable characters— mystics, siblings, parents, best friends, enemies, fanatics— on a journey through the ‘Seven Valleys of Love’ eventually culminating in how healing happens, or doesn’t, and how to move on. Iran’s poets and poetry guide this heartfelt novel into a story as majestic as the thirty birds who make up the Simorgh, the fantastical being and mythical heartbeat of A Girl Called Rumi. "
— Soniah Kamal, author of Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan
“From the horrors of Iran-Iraq war to the complex reality of modern-day Iran, this is a novel that is as mesmerizing and dynamic as the Persian poetry it carries.”
—Sahar Delijani, author of Children of the Jacaranda Tree
“This is a lovely, illuminating and touching debut novel. I was moved to tears reading this manuscript. Ari Honarvar is a brilliant writer and readers hunger for stories like this—full of fascinating new worlds and redemptive outcomes.”
—Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder
“Storytellers, mythical birds, and bombs collide in Honarvar's lyrical coming of age novel about post-revolution Iran.”
— Marivi Soliven, author of The Mango Bride
MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
Rasha Zamamiri's captivating performance of this timely audiobook will enchant listeners. Poetry, mysticism, and Persian folklore infuse a story that alternates between war-torn Iran in the early 1980s and San Diego and then Iran again in 2009. The narrative centers on Kimia, an Iranian-American life coach. She agrees to travel to Iran with her mother, a poet who remains traumatized by the war. Memories flood back to Kimia, some joyful and others painful. She recollects her childhood home and friends, as well as the Iranian policies that established restrictions on women's freedom. Zamamiri expresses the emotional core of each character, and her accents and pronunciation of Farsi words are impeccable. Listeners will feel they are in step with Kamia at every moment. M.J. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-10-18
An Iranian woman living in America confronts the trauma of her war-torn childhood in this debut novel.
Honarvar’s tale opens in Shiraz, Iran, in 1981 during the Iran-Iraq War. Kimia Shams is a 9-year-old girl on an errand to buy naan at a bakery when she is distracted by a puppet show performed by an enigmatic, aging storyteller. The square is targeted by a missile strike, and Kimia is dragged to safety by her brother, Arman. Kimia and her friend Reza Khan return to the scene of the devastation and discover a trapdoor that leads them into the magical realm of the storyteller, Baba Morshed. As the story unfolds, Baba tells the children a quest tale about the Simorgh, a bird from Persian mythology. Fast-forward to 2009, and Kimia is working as a spiritual counselor in California. She and her family still grapple with the psychological impact of war—her mother in particular is afflicted by bouts of shaking yet longs to return to her homeland. Kimia and her family journey to Iran but find themselves in the midst of the Green Uprising, where the ghosts of their past pose a clear danger. Honarvar’s gorgeously evocative prose subtly captures the young Kimia’s irrepressible delight in the face of oppression: “My sun-soaked eyes followed the touch, and although I couldn’t make out his face, I knew it was Reza. I broke into a smile. Not even my hijab could restrain the elation beaming from me.” The narrative is written predominantly from Kimia’s perspective, but some chapters are devoted to the viewpoints of other characters, such as Arman. Each is written in the first person, and although the author presents a variety of distinct voices, some readers may feel that a third-person narrative mode for such players would add further stylistic texture. This is a minor criticism of a story that draws beautifully on the power of Iranian fables to unearth the magical, restorative world that Kimia finds beneath the rubble of war: “The smooth texture of the wall changed to a rugged surface with dramatic peaks and valleys. I paused and examined a stone carving of the giant Simorgh stretched out before me.” This stellar first novel marks the writer as an author to watch.
A spellbinding, compelling, and multifaceted tale about an Iranian family haunted by war.
