Strand of a Thousand Pearls: A Novel - Hardcover

Rabinyan, Dorit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375508112 ISBN 13: 9780375508110

Publisher: Random House, 2002

Synopsis

For fans of Isabelle Allende and Laura Esquivel, here is the sensuous, spellbinding story of the Azizyan family—a story of love, marriage, and mischief by the bestselling, award-winning Dorit Rabinyan.

In the years leading up to Iran’s marriage, her mother weaves one long strand of pearls into a wedding dress, lovingly unraveled by the husband Iran finds one night down by the sea. Solly is a fisherman, shy, clumsy, and burning with love for his young bride, and with all but a thousand of these pearls, they buy a tiny flat in a house shaded by guava trees.

First comes Maurice, with a weak heart, then Sofia, Marcelle, and Lizzie, whose body is cursed with appetites, and mischievous Matti, who mourns her missing twin. At night, Iran coaxes her daughters to sleep with stories of their wedding nights, as they take turns conjuring dreams of the love that the future holds.

Redolent with the scent of lilac, white musk, and oleander trees, and bursting with the flavors of passion fruit, quinces, and overripe plums, Strand of a Thousand Pearls is the story of the imagined and actual marriages of the Azizyan girls, their years of yearning, restless and impatient, and the truth of their engagements, miles away from the enchanted realm and imaginary heroes of their dreams.

Four years ago, Dorit Rabinyan burst onto the scene with Persian Brides, a novel that established her as a writer of incandescent spirit with a gift for spinning wry, magical tales about the vagaries of love and marriage. In Strand of a Thousand Pearls, she has given us a bittersweet fable about desires fulfilled and denied—about married love and carnal love, about a mother’s love and the kind of love that vanishes one night without warning like an evaporated dream.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Other Suggested Reading

-Persian Brides by Dorit Rabinyan
-A Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginezburg.
-The History by Elza Morante
-Be My Knife and The Internal Grammar Book, by David Grossman
-The Judges by Elie Wiesel
-Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
-Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
-Atonement by Ian McEwan
-Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
-Halide’s Gift by Frances Kazan
-Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esqueval
-Portrait in Sepia by Isabelle Allende
-The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
-Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
-A Heart So White by Javier Marias

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Persian Brides

“She writes with the wise and leisurely assurance of a town bard recounting communal myths....Rabinyan’s marvelously digressive style and rich prose give the story the feel of a nightlong wedding feast....An auspicious debut.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A dazzling and assured first novel...Persian Brides at once demystifies and mesmerizes.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“A wondrous tale made more magical by its setting among the almond trees and sharp-tongued women of a Persian village...Persian Brides mixes honey-sweet humor with vinegary-sharp pain and the writing is as pungent as the steam rising from the women’s cooking pots.”
—The Guardian

“The characters, comic, sodden, and sly, spill out of this small book like clowns in a ragtag circus.”
—The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375508112
• ISBN 13: 9780375508110
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272