Overview

While other Iranian girls of the early twentieth century cook, sew, and hope for marriage, Gohar climbs trees, reads books, plays tar, and dreams of escaping her forsaken desert town. But when her forbidden correspondence with a non- Muslim boy is discovered, fear of banishment forces the fatherless Gohar to welcome the protection of Saleh Mirza, a powerful nobleman. At 14, she marries his choice of husband, a 55-year-old politician expecting to enter her marital home in a white chador and leave it in a white shroud. But fate takes her to Tehran, where she is dazzled by the electric lights and gramophones but appalled by the misery, poverty, corruption, and foreign meddling. Endangering her life and marriage, she joins the reformists, while secretly idolizing Aslan, a mysterious Russian allied with the Iranian nationalists. Then Russia invades northern Iran, and the country erupts. In the chaos of war, does a married Iranian Muslim have a future with a Russian Christian hunted by his own government? Silenced Whispers tells the story of an Iranian woman's battle for freedom-hers and her country's-and love amid profound social change and imperial power grabs. Vividly portraying life in Iran at the dawn of the twentieth century, the book is inspired by the author's upbringing in an Azeri family in Tehran and her Russian great-grandfather.

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"Afarin Bellisario was born and raised in Tehran in a family with its feet in the past and its head in the future: whereas her grandmothers could barely read, her university-educated father and uncles were prominent members of Iran's new technocratic elite. Her great grandfather had 25 wives and concubines; she holds a PhD from MIT. She perceives this as progress.She began writing professionally in major women and youth publications and the literary magazine Ferdousi at the age of 14, in pre-revolutionary Tehran. She came to the US to study and stayed when the Islamic Revolution happened. Most of her professional career has been spent in the high-tech world in both technical and business capacities. But she has continued writing. In 2013, her essay ""Movies with My Aunt"" was published in the anthology Love & Pomegranates, edited by M. N. Sayers. The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe have published several of her op-eds, and she writes regularly about the clash between tradition and modernity on Medium (Counterview). Through her writing, she actively seeks to create a conversation around the themes covered in her book, ""Silenced Whispers."""

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