Book Review: The story of a woman on a quest to find herself

Donia Bijan’s debut novel leads readers through a spectrum of emotions with an incredibly relatable story.
Updated 08 March 2018
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Book Review: The story of a woman on a quest to find herself

Donia Bijan’s debut novel, “Last Days of Café Leila,” is the story of a woman attempting to find herself by rediscovering her family history and her roots: Her native Iran, her parent’s home, and her family’s beloved Café Leila.
Bijan herself left Iran in 1978 and ran a restaurant in Palo Alto, California, for 10 years, so there are clearly some autobiographical touches in the novel.
Run by three-generations of the Yadegar family, Café Leila has stood throughout Iran’s political turmoil and its effects on the country and its people. It is a powerful novel about family, strength, and resilience that sweeps the reader into Tehran and into the lives of the Yadegars from the early 1930s to the present day.
Behzod (Zod) Yadegar, the café’s second-generation owner, is in Tehran waiting for the postman to deliver a letter from his daughter, Noor. But sometimes letters from America can take two or three weeks to arrive.
Meanwhile, Noor, a nurse in San Francisco, has left her husband of 16 years, due to his infidelity, and moved into an apartment with her teenage daughter. Eventually, unable to pull herself out of the hole she has fallen into, Noor writes to her father and asks her if she can come back home.
This is when the story moves to Tehran and Café Leila.
“In a cul-de-sac at the end of Nasrin Street, quiet except at the hour when the kindergartners at Firouzeh Elementary were set free, sat a faded yellow brick building detached from its neighbors. Here, beneath a recessed sign, was Café Leila, its entrance framed in a low-hanging wisteria in full bloom.”
Within the confines of Café Leila, its garden and the now-obsolete Hotel Leila are Zod; 85-year-old Naneh Goli — Zod’s old nanny; waiters Hedayat and Aladdin who “still wore the same faded dark blue jackets with gold-fringed epaulettes, making them look like retired generals;” cousin Soli, who joined the staff after the war; and Karim, a young orphan apprentice who does odd jobs around the complex when not in school. With the exception of Soli and Karim, these are all the people Noor left behind nearly 30 years ago.
Bijan sensitively contrasts Noor’s San Francisco and Zod’s Tehran. In America, there is cautious comfort, a beauty Noor recognizes, but from which she feels disconnected. In Tehran there is a familiarity, a certain sense of calm, despite the troubles and fear of political edicts.
Bijan also contrasts the emotions of mother and daughter. Lily, born and raised in America, is furious about their move. She has never visited Iran and does not speak the language. But Noor realizes her life in San Francisco had left her feeling empty, and finally feels a sense of belonging. “The world changed around Café Leila, but the life that had gone on there since the 1930s continued,” Bijan writes. The café is the glue that holds three generations together.
In every corner of the house, restaurant and garden are bits and pieces of Noor’s life, as well as the lives of her brother Mehrdad, her parents and her Russian expat grandparents who first opened the café. Noor embraces that past as the Café does — a history spanning generations. The small orchard of pomegranate, almond and mulberry planted by Noor’s grandfather Yanik, for instance, “Year after year they blossomed, filling the air with their sweet smell, regardless of political turmoil or the events on the street.” Through Yanik and Nina came a love for Iran and for Persian food that lives on through Zod and Noor.
Bijan’s story is a refreshing take on the immigrant experience — one that is filled with the discovery of culture and of delicious and inventive cuisine.
There is trouble for Noor and Lily in Tehran, in the form of restrictive laws and an ailing, elderly father, but somehow the two women manage to find themselves, or, in Lily’s case, another version of herself she was unaware existed.
“Last Days of Café Leila” is about cherishing the past and reclaiming spaces in both the physical and mental realms. It is about understanding oneself through one’s family and traditions. It is a journey that keeps Noor teetering on a line between her two roles of daughter to a sick father and mother to a defiant teenager.
Bijan writes beautifully of a homecoming, not only in terms of familial ties, but also the sensual experience: the trees, the sounds, the sights, and smells.
Café Leila is not just Noor’s childhood home, it is a place of refuge, healing, and a place of acceptance no matter status or creed.
Bijan leads her readers through a spectrum of emotions with an incredibly relatable story, especially for people who have had to leave their homes for whatever reason. Bijan, through Noor, sums up the story simply and powerfully: “(She) couldn’t do anything to change the conditions, she couldn’t deny her awareness and she couldn’t stand in the way of death or love. The only thing to do was to keep moving, to do something, to show courage, to give everything she was capable of giving.”


What We Are Reading Today: Money Capital

Updated 21 May 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Money Capital

Authors: Patrick Bolton & Haizhou Huang

In this book, leading economists Patrick Bolton and Haizhou Huang offer a novel perspective, viewing monetary economics through the lens of corporate finance.

They propose a richer theory, where money can be seen as the equity capital of a nation, playing a similar role as stocks for a company. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Crossing Thoughts’

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Updated 20 May 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Crossing Thoughts’

Author: Sultan Ayaz

“Crossing Thoughts” is a fantasy novel in English by Saudi author Sultan Ayaz, published in 2017.

Ayaz’s novel is about humans defending their homeland against demon oppression. It is about the eternal fight between humanity and demons, and the person who stands between them.

The story begins with Drake, a child who lives a peaceful life with his family in a small town. However, a demonic attack destroys the village, but Drake somehow survives.

Three characters emerge: Aria, Ray and Amber, who study the nature of elements at the Grand College of Elements in the Kingdom of Iora, one of three kingdoms suffering demonic oppression. They learn to employ elemental magic as a weapon against their demonic opponents.

Aria (wind element user), Amber (fire element user) and Ray (thunder element user) end up fighting a sea demon and are discovered by a mysterious man called Soul, who admires their powers and helps them train to become “demon slayers,” to free humans from oppression.

There are many fight scenes in the storyline using magic and elements, and the book is full of drama, plot twists and terror.

What I liked about the narrative is how easy it is to read and follow, and the development of the world building —from the village to the Kingdom of Iora.

The female characters in the novel shine brighter and have distinct styles, making them more intriguing to read about, and each possesses a particular power.   

It might be confusing for some readers that the story begins with Drake’s perspective and then cuts to the story of Aria, Amber and Ray. However, the more you read, the more intriguing the female storylines become.

The book has received four-plus star ratings on the Goodreads website and is simple enough to read in one sitting.  

In 2020, Ayaz became one of the first Saudi novelists to have a fiction work in English published overseas when Olympia Publishers, a British publishing house, purchased the rights to “Crossing Thoughts.”

The novel is also set to be adapted into a Manga comic by Manga Arabia.

 


What We Are Reading Today: When the Bombs Stopped

Updated 20 May 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: When the Bombs Stopped

Author: Erin Lin

Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United states dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.

Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land.


What We Are Reading Today: Father Time

Updated 19 May 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Father Time

Author: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things.

Puzzled and dazzled by the tender expertise of new fathers around the world— several in her own family—celebrated evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be “normal.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Breaking the Mold’

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Updated 18 May 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Breaking the Mold’

Authors: RAGHURAM G. RAJAN AND ROHIT LAMBA

India’s economy has overtaken the United Kingdom’s to become the fifth-largest in the world, but it is still only one-fifth the size of China’s, and India’s economic growth is too slow to provide jobs for millions of its ambitious youth.

In “Breaking the Mold,” Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba show why and how India needs to blaze a new path if it’s to succeed.