The Lion Women of Tehran

Kamali’s deeply personal, beautifully told narrative about a decades-long, life-defining friendship is set against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. Ellie and Homa seem to have little in common, yet they are everything to each other, and share a commitment to women’s rights as they navigate a period of cataclysmic change in their country and their own families. As they come of age and face ever greater political danger, the young women's friendship suffers as they choose opposing paths in the fight for women’s rights. This emotional, heart-centered story perceptively captures the Iran of this era—Tehran as it was then, the climate, the politics, the food!—and moves readers as it portrays Homa and Ellie’s quest to become lion women: powerful Iranian women who don’t back down, no matter what.