In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate first-hand in his country's political and social upheavals.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Iran, Parisa Reza has written a powerful love story filled with scenes of hope and heartbreak.

Parisa Reza
Parisa Reza was born in Tehran in 1965 to a family of intellectuals and artists, and moved to France at the age of seventeen. She was awarded the Prix Senghor 2015 for her first novel, The Gardens of Consolation.

• Mar 1 2017
  “a beautiful tour de force of a novel”
  — World Literature Today
• Feb 13 2017
  'The Gardens of Consolation' spans six decades of Iranian history
  — The Christian Science Monitor
• Feb 1 2017
  Editors' Pick
  — Historical Novels Review
• Jan 17 2017
  "...[a] luminous first novel ..."
  — Barnes and Noble Review
• Jan 9 2017
  "The novel is at its best when it evokes the family’s comfort, despite the upheavals, in sensual, timeless pleasures: vats hot with rose petals and lamb, 'the smell of jasmine and damp soil.'"
  — The New Yorker
• Jan 6 2017
  "The Gardens of Consolation heralds the arrival of yet another prodigiously talented French-Iranian author, Parisa Reza, whose outstanding debut novel, like the works of Marjane Satrapi and Fariba Hachtroudi, voices a side of Iran rarely glimpsed in Western media."
  — Shelf Awareness