A Mirror Garden
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Both a love story and a celebration of the warmth and elegance of Iranian culture, A Mirror Garden is a genuine fairy tale of an exuberant heroine who has never needed rescuing.
“Captivating.... Farmanfarmaian's sumptuously detailed recollections are a rare, insidery look at two lost worlds.”
—Vogue
In Persia in 1924, when a child still had to worry about hostile camels in the bazaar and a nanny might spin stories at her pillow until her eyes fell shut, the extraordinary and irresistible Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian was born. From the enchanted basement storeroom where she played as a girl to the penthouse high above New York City where she would someday live, this is the delightful and inspiring story of her life as an artist, a wife and mother, a collector, and an Iranian. Here we see a mischievous girl become a spirited woman who defies tradition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this meandering memoir, an Iranian artist from a prominent family shares memories of her posh, wide-ranging life, from the early years under the Qajar shahs to post-revolutionary Iran. Born to a family of wealthy merchant politicians in 1924 in the thriving city of Qazvin, the author attended the first school for girls in her hometown. The family moved to Tehran in 1932 when her father was elected to parliament, and there she enjoyed a privileged life ushered in by the modernization regime of Reza Shah, before various foreign powers invaded the country during World War II. A gifted artist with family connections, she moved to New York to study at Parsons, and her exotic sense of color and design secured her work at Bonwit Teller, an exclusive New York City department store. An early marriage crumbled, but Shahroudy married a second time in 1957 into a high-ranking Iranian family, the Farmanfarmaians. She was then in a position to become an art connoisseur and collector, especially of Iranian folk art such as coffeehouse paintings and mirror mosaics. While her memoir lacks focus, she (along with Iranian-American writer Houshmand) nicely captures a bygone epoch in a very likable voice.
