What a novel set in 1953 Tehran reveals about Iran’s present crisis: Revisiting Marjan Kamali's 'The Stationery Shop'

It’s 1953, Tehran. Roya and Bahman, both 17, meet at a stationery shop. They share a passion for Rumi’s poetry.

Their love blossoms at a time when Iran teeters on the edge of political upheaval.

Only Bahman is also a political activist; a supporter of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, whose push to nationalise Iran’s oil has placed him on a collision course with Western powers. As Roya and Bahman plan their future, the country is pulled apart by unrest.

On the day they are meant to marry, history intervenes.

A coup topples Mosaddegh, forces his supporters into hiding, and restores the Shah (king) to power. Iran’s short-lived democracy is crushed and replaced by a monarchy. That coup was orchestrated by the US intelligence agency, the CIA, and Britain’s MI6. Roya never sees Bahman again, until decades later.

This is the plot of The Stationery Shop of Tehran, a 2019 bestseller by Iranian-American writer Marjan Kamali. But while Roya and Bahman are fictional characters, the backdrop is not.

The power centres

Iran is once again in a period of political unrest. Nationwide protests have challenged the authority of the authoritarian Islamic Republic, led by supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Estimates suggest hundreds have been killed.

Meanwhile, the US administration has thrown its weight behind the protests, and so has the US-based crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Iran, meanwhile, accuses the US and Israel of stoking internal dissent.

Reading about these developments brought me back to Kamali’s novel, which immerses the reader in Iranian culture—its poetry, cuisine, and way of life—on one hand, and illuminates the roots of Iran’s long and fraught relationship with the US, on the other.

Where non-fiction accounts tend to chart power centres and political actors, The Stationery Shop of Tehran shows instead how ordinary lives are bent and broken by those forces.

In the book, when pro-democracy activists rally behind Mosaddegh, the reader is drawn into their optimism.

As political divisions seep even into classrooms, that optimism curdles into foreboding, and when a foreign-orchestrated coup tears two lovers—and a country—apart, you feel their helplessness.

Interestingly, while critics in the West often cite religious conservatism for their opposition, the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself was fuelled by deep public resentment toward the Shah, whose rule was imposed after the CIA- and MI6-backed coup of 1953.

“The young here these days need something to latch on to; something to believe in, and for something to not be Shah,” Kamali writes.

“Children believe the answer lies in Ayatollah Khomeini.”

At its heart, The Stationery Shop of Tehran is the story of Roya and Bahman, and of love disrupted by forces beyond their control.

Kamali’s novel also does more than simply charting personal tragedy—it captures the political unrest that has defined Iran since the upheaval of its democracy, and how that has thrown common people into a state of both hope and concern.

“We want democracy, but never seem to get it. What if what follows is worse?” Kamali muses.