Javady Alley

Homa's world is the intensely private one of childhood, bounded by house and courtyard and the alley where she plays with her friends. The year is 1953, a turbulent time in Iran, and Homa is seven years old.Her life is lived, with her mother and her beloved grandmother, in the enclosed world of women. But this long hot summer is disrupted by hidden tensions, the quarrels of her parents, the taboos she cannot comprehend. And it is full of the discoveries she makes about her own sexuality, the value of friendship, the power of men and what this means to her, who will grow up to be a woman.In the outside world, nationalist forces under Prime Minister Mosadegh are attempting to wrest the country's oil from British control, workers are invading the streets to denounce the Shah, and Islamic fundamentalists are beginning to scent the prospect of political power. Homa watches, with the limitless curiosity of a child, struggling to understand this adult world and her own clamorous inner life.Haunted by the sights, smells and sounds of daily life, Manny Shirazi's prose is at once sensuous and direct. Javady Alley is a truly extraordinary first novel, full of power for all those who strive, like the author, to remember the past in constructing the future.