After the enthusiastic revolutionaries attacked Hoshanak's house and burned musical instruments, books, and all the things they considered forbidden, he decided to leave Tehran, taking his wife, Rosa, his two sons, Sohrab and Beta, and the third daughter, Bahar, to settle in a distant village, hoping Preserving their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the chaos of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution sweeping the country.
The fates of all family members change, and they are divided between pain and memory, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the times, events, and narrative spaces that “Bahar” narrates intersect, mixing violence and brutality with mysticism, meditation, magic, and myths, invoking oral narrative traditions to confront cruelty with the power of imagination.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020, Green Plum Tree's Rise is a fascinating journey through Persian history and mythology, woven in the style of magical realism, exploring the fate of hope and dream in Iran today.
Marie Noël does not know who her father is, nor does she know why her mother abandoned her immediately after her birth and left her in the care of Ranleys, nor does she know what prompted this mother to send a letter ten years later demanding her daughter.
The girl travels into the unknown, living with an emotionally cold mother, tormented by memories of the past. After she grows up, she goes to Boston to complete her studies, and marries an innovative jazz musician, while the question, “Who am I? And who is my family?” continues to haunt her in all the places she lives, and so she seeks to understand what happened before she was born, but a series of dark secrets... And the elusive facts are faced.
In this novel, which won the Prix Carbet de la Caraibe, Maryse Conde writes a tale of lost love and unwanted motherhood, capturing the voice of the Caribbean diaspora with grace and sweetness.