Praise for The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

★ "Azar's narrative exudes fairy tale charm driven by moments of deep connection that ultimately celebrate human and humane bonds unbroken even in death."--Booklist

"Engaging, tantalizing, and memorable."--Foreword Reviews

"If ever there was a book that needs to be read more than once, this is it."--ArtsHub

"One of those miraculous books that not only has the power to send an arrow into your heart, it also makes you think."--Qantara

"Shokoofeh Azar has found a brilliant way to use myth to record harsh truths about political and cultural upheaval."--BookRiot

"[Azar's] book is a great journey. It moves places and it moves us as readers, in an emotional and intellectual sense."--Robert Wood, The Los Angeles Review of Books

"The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a hugely ambitious book, blending familial drama with the history of a nation during a conflicted era."--Words Without Borders

"Azar's novel is sad, funny, poetic, moving and poignant all at once, a novel I would recommend without any reservations at all."--Asian Review of Books

"A book full of hope and human resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty and intolerance"--World Literature Today

"The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is both a simple family story and a complex look at the nature of reality and imagination."--The Winnipeg Free Press

"[The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree] affirms again the adaptability, the veracity, the sheer power of the novel form." --The Brooklyn Rail

"The plot is intricate...the writing is ravishing: shimmeringly poetic...so mesmerizing is the storytelling."--Miriam Cosic, The Weekend Australian

"Azar delves deep into the mythological spirit realm and pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia . . . [taking] us into breathtaking worlds of imagination and allegory . . . Astonishing."--Backstory

"I have never read such a voice before. It is playful, poetic and deeply melancholy at the same time. Azar writes about the blunt force or Iranian history with the lightness of a feather's touch. Transcendental, brilliant and beautiful."--Alice Pung, author of Laurinda

"Combing characters loosely drawn from her own life with a mélange of supernatural elements, Azar achieves a certain magical realist style that is rich without being baroque, amply lush without being weighed down by access."--Asymptote Journal