#shokoofeh azar

[litandroses]

2022 Notable Reads

In no particular order! Books included here does not necessarily mean I rated them highly or that I rated them at all. These are the ones that pleasantly surprised me, that had me thinking, made me feel (scarily) seen, and for some the lasting impact (on me) was simply inexplicable sadness.

Should you choose to read whichever book seems interesting to you or one that is not yet familiar to you, I hope you enjoy too.

You may also find this list here <3

[paullovescomics]

Fiction and Poetry that I read in the second half of 2023

That's it! Those are very different novels, but they don't go in any of the other categories. I've enjoyed reading poetry again after so many years. It's not easy to find the stuff I like, but thankfully the local bookstore downtown has a large selection.

[sedativoeroticoscorre]

2025 reading list in no particular order:

Against a loveless world, Susan Abulhawa

Brideshead revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Faithfull, Marianne Faithfull (re-read)

A Palestinian trilogy, Mahmoud Darwish

Sense and sensibility, Jane Austen (re-read)

Grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck

The enlightenment of the greengage tree, Shokoofeh Azar

The years, Virginia Woolf

A bright shining lie, Neil Sheehan

Memoirs, Georgia O'Keeffe

Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (re-read)

Waiting on God, Simone Weil

Armadale, Wilkie Collins

Journals of Sylvia Plath

La tomba di Antigone, Maria Zambrano

Memoirs of a dutiful daughter, Simone de Beauvoir

Autobiography of Malcolm X (re-read)

Undefined for now but i also want to re-read some nonfiction especially about art also Edward Said i will decide later though

Also finish the ones i'm currently reading:

Sonecka, Marina Cvetaeva (possibly before end of the year)

Self-portrait, Carla Lonzi

A feast for crows, grrm

[mosterriblewoman]

my 2023 favs

i will focus on books because i don't really listen to music much, when i do lately it's a lot of Mina or some ambient/jazz to study. i also happen to forget about the movies i watch lol. The first book i want to mention is "Le italiane si confessano" by Gabriella Parca, a collection of letters that italian women would -almost always- anonymously send to newspapers in the 50s/60s in hope they'd offer them a solution to their sufferings. It's nothing extraordinary per se (considering it's just an assemblage), but i think it's the rawness with which these letters are presented that impressed me. The author is absent, but her intention is loud. She leaves the readers alone with their own personal and inevitable final considerations. You cannot read this and still think Italy is a sane country. I also loved "Maybe Esther" by Katja Petrowskaja, which i read both in german and italian. Katja was born on my same day and -as stupid as that may sound- i felt connected to her through her writing style straight away. I took that as a sign i would love the book (and i did). She took me with her in her search for her family history. it's an intense work that i couldn't stop reading. i've found in her my same pride in knowing i come from a long secuence of admirable people and just like her i continuously keep track of who and where i come from, without rest. My last mention is "The enlightenment of the greengage tree" by Shokoofeh Azar. I loved the touch of magic realism that immediately made me think of an iranian One hundred years of solitude (intent which the book itself confirms between the lines). I could just connect the dots with my hispanic american literature's knowledge and it was so fascinating. Azar introduced me to persian folklore and gave me a better understanding of Iran's history through the desperation of a family that keeps living after its physical death. She succeeded in letting pages and pages of layered and oblique realities (that i usually cannot stand) be light and pleasurable.

i hope you will enjoy these as much as i did, if you ever read. thank you @mstepenwolf for the tag 🖤 mutuals feel free to join

[thepainsofyearning]

“And love, only love

carried me to the expanse of life's sorrow

delivered me to the places to become a bird.”

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree -Shokoofeh Azar

[faithsbookdiary]

BOOK LIST + MOVIE LIST

POST EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE*

BOOKS

The unread/in-progress books on my shelves include:

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Kafka on the Shore (finished)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (finished)

IQ84 (in-progress)

Underground

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

A Wild Sheep Chase

Killing Commendatore

After Dark

SHOKOOFEH AZAR

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (finished)

BAE MYUNG-HOON

Tower (finished)

BORA CHUNG

Curse Bunny

JOKHA ALHERTHI

Celestial Bodies

KAREN TEI YAMASHITA

Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

ABE

The Woman in the Dunes

BANANA YOSHIMOTO

kitchen

YAN GE

Strange Beasts of China

WU CH'ENG-EN

Monkey (in progress)

ROYALL TYLER

Japanese Tales

MOVIES

The movies I'd eventually like to talk about include:

Belle (2021)

The Boy and the Beast (2016)

Summer Wars (2009)

Mirai (2018)

Anthem of the Heart (2015)

My favorite Kdrama list: https://mydramalist.com/list/4a6NkMm1

(last updated 02/03/2022. Any recommendations can be sent via asks. Thank you!!)

*Frequency of posts tbd as I start out. Thank you for your patience!!

[universitybookstore]

New from Europa Editions and one of Iran’s rising literary stars, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, by Shokoofeh Azar. “ Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people. “ -- from the Stella Prize citation. (Read the interview with the author here.)

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree | Author: Shokoofeh Azar | Publisher: Europa (2020)

[left-handlibrary]

Making a start on The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree. There are a few on the Stella Prize longlist I’m excited to get to, though it’s unlikely that I’ll make my way through many before the shortlist, or even the actual award itself, is announced. This novel is set just after the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979) which, as the blurb says, ‘draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people’.

[bookishluna]

Reading Challenge | Reading a Shortlist 2021

Reading Challenge | Reading a Shortlist 2021

Hello and welcome to one of the first posts where I go through some of the goals I have for myself in 2021. One challenge I have for myself is reading a shortlist. This past year I did the Man Booker Prize, which is not just the Booker Prize. I will be posting a wrap up to that tomorrow, so keep an eye out! This year I decided I am going to read the International Booker Prize 2020 Shortlist. I…

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #110

Winding Up the Week #110

An end of week recap

I ventured out between downpours this week to join Barmouth Library in the hope of tracking down an English-language collection of Caradog Pritchard’s poetry for the Wales Readathon (having failed to detect any such thing on the Internet). Alas, it appears none of his poems have been translated and I must turn elsewhere for a suitable introduction to Dewithon 2020, which…

[litandroses]

Boosting a message:

Shokoofeh Azar is the author of The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree which I have recently read and enjoyed immensely. Shokoofeh Azar author made use of magical realism to express the plight of Iranian people, for some the indirect implications may not work, but in my case, I was left devastated; a part of me will stay in Razan.

Synopsis:

From the pen of one of Iran’s rising literary stars, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the dead.

Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness.

Told from the wise yet innocent gaze of a young girl, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime.

[morshiberna]

tagged by @songsfromfakemovies thank you caro 🫶🏻🫂

last song: disco tits by tove lo

last movie: Нелюбовь (2017)

currently reading: i will soon start reading ‘the enlightenment of the greengage tree’ by shokoofeh azar!

tagging @weiwuxian @sehnis @katesharmasheart @harubirus @deppixelated @vanillalipstick66 🥰🥰🥰

[bookclub4m]

21 Books in Translation by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here. This is our retrospective book list for Episode 006 - Books in Translation.

Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi, translated by Sawad Hussain (Arabic)

Mirror of the Darkest Night by Mahasweta Devi, translated by Shamya Dasgupta (Bengali)

Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese SF in Translation, edited and translated by Ken Liu (Chinese)

Beijing Comrades by Bei Tong, translated by Scott E. Myers (Chinese)

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translated by Anonymous (Farsi)

Ru by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman (French)

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated by Roland Glasser (French)

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye, translated by John Fletcher (French)

Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen, translated by Anna Halager (Greenlandic/Danish)

Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker (Indonesian)

Beyond Babylon by Igiaba Scego, translated by Aaron Robertson (Italian)

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang (Korean)

Your Republic is Calling You by Young-Ha Kim, translated by Chi-Young Kim (Korean)

The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda (Japanese)

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur (Kannada)

The Sun on My Head by Geovani Martins, translated by Julia Sanches (Portugese)

Good Morning Comrades by Ondjaki, translated by Stephen Henighan (Portugese)

Time Commences in Xibalbá by Luis de Lión, translated by Nathan C. Henne (Spanish)

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, translated by Lawrence Schimel (Spanish)

Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat by Perumal Murugan, translated by N. Kalyan Raman (Tamil)

Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks by Boubacar Boris Diop, translated by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop (Wolof/French)

[mosterriblewoman]

the enlightenment of the greengage tree by shokoofeh azar is so far so beautiful

[vera-dauriac]

6, 12, 18 for the books meme

6 newest release of the year?

I read a few things released this year (which is what I think the question is getting at).

The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts

The Bright Lands by John Fram A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie

The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Common Goal by Rachel Reid

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translation Adrien Kijek It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo, translation Elizabeth Bryer

Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann, translation Ross Benjamin (Which is this year if you count when it was translated into English)

The Kingdom by Jo Nesbo, translated by Robert Ferguson (Which is surely the most recent release—November 10 in English.)

12 what book was the most out of your comfort zone?

The Bright Lands by John Fram. I usually don’t read horror.

18 what books did you reread?

Emma by Jane Austen

Howards End by EM Forster

A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie

Thanks so much for asking Nonny! Other folks should feel free to ask more from this list.