Donia Bijan

Family. It's all we've got, when you come right down to the heart of things, and blood relationship is not necessarily a requirement. The Last Days of Café Leila is about family, in its many permutations.

Noor's father sent her to America when she was eighteen, away from the difficult and brutal life in post-revolution Iran. More than thirty years later Noor goes back to Tehran after she divorces her husband, sulky fifteen-year-old daughter Lily in tow. That summer, spent with the people who loved Noor enough to send her away, will change them both, in ways that neither could imagine.

My heart was touched by the story. It's another one for my recommend-to-friends shelf.… (meer)

Noor's family in Iran have have run a restaurant for generations although Noor has lived in the US for thirty years and has a teenage daughter, Lily. Recently divorced, she took Lily, with her ex-husband's permission, for a vacation in Iran and then decided to stay. It is understandable that an expat will want to return to her homeland to care for aging parents but this story is more like child abduction - and to a country that has few basic freedoms for women. I'm attributing this poor decision to the emotional devastation Noor experienced after the divorce. The book was disappointing, the writing immature, missing something that I thought might have been lost in a poor translation. This, however, was not the case for the book was written in English. My version was an audiobook that was not narrated well.… (meer)