Madame Bovary

Our May book will be Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.   It is available free through Project Gutenburg.

"When Emma Rouault marries dull, provincial doctor Charles Bovary, her dreams of an elegant and passionate life crumble. She escapes into sentimental novels but finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. She spends lavishly and embarks on a series of disappointing affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, Emma takes drastic action with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was embraced by bourgeois women who claimed it spoke to the frustrations of their lives."   from Amazon

Part of the awakening of the main character in The House I Loved was reading this novel.   

Little Black Fish

For those who wish to read the "banned" book, The Little Black Fish by Samad Behrangi, mentioned in
The Sky of Red Poppies, here is the link to it.

S Behrangi

http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/sbehrangi/works/the_little_black_fish.php

It is very short and after reading the book, you understand why it was banned.

Just discovered a great site for art, culture, and history of Iran:
http://www.iranchamber.com/index.php

Sky of Red Poppies

Our April selection: Sky of Red Poppies by Zoreh Ghahremani.   Below is the blurb from Amazon:

"Sky of Red Poppies begins with a casual friendship between two schoolgirls coming of age in a politically divided 1960's Iran under rule of the Shah. Roya, the daughter of a prominent family, is envious of the fierce independence of her religious classmate Shireen. But Shireen has secrets of her own. Together, Roya and Shireen contend with becoming the women they want to be, and in doing so, make decisions that will cause their tragic undoing. In the unraveling of family secrets, Roya begins to question how she was raised and how to become the person she wishes to be. Set against the backdrop of a nation forced to mute its profound identity, Sky of Red Poppies is a novel about culture, politics and the redeeming power of friendships."