The Blood Of Flowers

Description

Set in seventeenth-century Iran, The Blood of Flowers is the powerful and haunting story of a young girl's journey from innocence to adulthood. The novel begins in the 1620s in a remote village where the narrator (whose name, in the Iranian storytelling tradition, we are never to know) lives with her mother and rug-maker father. On the sudden death of her father, our heroine and her mother fall upon hard times and are forced to travel to the bustling, beautiful, exotic city of Isfahan where relatives take them in. Everything is new: the grudging charity of her aunt, the encouragement of her uncle, one of the finest carpet-makers in the world, who begins to teach her his craft, the treacherous friendship of the daughter of rich neighbours. And there's an adventure ahead which will introduce her to the sensual side of life as well as to the cruelty of betrayal and rejection before she finds her way to contentment and possibly, even, to happiness, in a world full of contrasts and dangers.

Anita Amirrezvani was born in Iran but has lived in the USA since she was a young child. She has visited Iran many times and has been steeped in tales of Iranian life and history from an early age. THE BLOOD OF FLOWERS is her first novel.

'Amirrezvani weaves her own experiences into the prose: giving a sense of the country.' -- Eastern Courier Messenger and City Messenger, Australia 'This is a journey of the soul from enslavement to freedom through the creation of the narrators own story. It exudes a vibrancy of colour and sensuousness but also draws vividly the squalor of poverty.' -- Adelaide Advertiser 'I've just read the most wonderful book by Anita Amirezzvani... it is fascinating, totally original and utterly gripping. It will remain one of my favourite books' -- Esther Freud, Independent on Sunday 'Sensuous and transporting...filled with the colours, tastes and fragrances of life in seventeenth-century Isfahan' -- Geraldine Brooks 'Amirrezvani... infuses her heroine with lilting eloquence' -- Washington Post 'Beautifully imagined... Simply a stunning debut' -- San Francisco Chronicle 'Lushly written, sensual' -- Australian Women's Weekly