It surprised me how unmoved I was by Marjan Kamali’s “The Stationery Shop of Tehran”. Despite its best efforts, I found it to be a strangely unfocused novel, frustratingly lacking in the right details. 

• Published: 2019
• Completed: 23/10/2026
• Pages: 308

The central story concerns 17 year old Roya, and her romance with the same-aged Bahman, in Mr Fakhri’s stationery shop in Tehran, 1953. They quickly fall in love and are subsequently engaged, but become tragically and maliciously separated, never marrying and not seeing each other again until towards the end of their lives. Despite this, their love for each other endures during their lives as an aching unrequited yearning.

Politics is a constant presence and theme in the novel, with Kamali placing Roya and Bahman’s relationship in Iran at a time of increasing tension between the country’s Shah and Prime Minister. However, I feel the undeniable and wide reaching impact of the political situation was very poorly conveyed to the reader.

I really wanted to read more about how Roya and her extended family and friends were affected by Iran’s modernisation. Instead, I only got a vague impression of these vital events and relationships. Give me more than the throwaway lines about scarves being ripped off women’s heads and the passing references to the Islamic Revolution! While Kamali was right to concentrate her attentions on Roya, Bahman and Mr Fakhri, the characters on the periphery just receded too sharply for me.

An example of this is in the incomplete depiction of Roya’s immediate family. When Roya’s sister marries, her parents do not attend, and when they die, it is not clear if either of their children returned from overseas to see them. Both events are practically footnotes in the novel and are indicative of a broader inability to more fully realise Roya’s character and world. 

Then there is Roya and Bahman’s relationship with each other. I don’t know why, but it seemed completely unremarkable to me. When Roya later marries Walter, I actually got a much better sense of the cause for attraction. It’s presented in the novel as Roya settling or giving up, but Walter is demonstratively caring, supportive and loving in ways that could never be evidenced in with Roya’s short teenage romance with Bahman. 

Ultimately, this was a very ambitious novel in its scope. Just there were too many loose ends and unanswered questions for me. To really honour the subject matter and vast timeframe, “The Stationery Shop of Tehran” needed to either be a lot longer or better edited. A missed connection for me I’m afraid.

Questions & Thoughts

• If you were that obsessed with each other, a letter would not be enough to keep you away from each other
• Why would Jahangir even want to keep Roya and Bahman apart?
• If Bahman was really that besotted with Roya, would he not have talked to her parents at least?

Typography

I know it’s not a done thing, but I would have loved to see some actual Farsi calligraphy in context. 

New Words

• Farangi
• Doodool = penis
• Nowruz
• Siasi
• Peter Pan collar
• Ghazals
• Samovar 
• Bergamot

Restaurant

Ferdous Garden