But what makes it truly worth reading is the coming of age of Pasha and Ahmed. This window to Iran, establishment of setting, and sense of community make Rooftops of Tehran interesting and enjoyable.

There is a strong and warm sense of community throughout the entire novel from all of the characters' respect for elders, family ties, friendships, concern for one another, and hospitality. Though descriptions of time and place are overwrought, the neighborhood setting of the novel is still beautifully established through the relationships and activities of people. Readers will be fascinated by the differences between their culture and Persian culture and will marvel at the similarities. Readers are taken through the development of Pasha, Doctor, Zari, Ahmed, and Faheemeh's relationships as friends, neighbors, and lovers, as well as through their shocking and heartbreaking encounters with the SAVAK, the Shah's secret police.ĭebut author Mahbod Seraji takes extra special care to introduce and explain Persian culture, politics, and history. The novel has a leisurely pace and the reasons behind Pasha's confinement are slowly revealed. The chapters in Rooftops of Tehran alternate between the summer Pasha falls in love with Zari and his time in a psychiatric hospital almost a year later. Pasha's best friend Ahmed is in love too, with Faheemeh, a girl being forced to marry a man she does not love.

Ramin, who is better known as Doctor, is a university student activist who hates the Shah and his government. Zari is beautiful, intelligent, older - and engaged to Pasha's mentor and friend, Ramin. In Tehran, seventeen-year-old Pasha is in love with the girl next door. It is the early 1970s and the people of Iran are bewildered and pained by political injustice. Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji (NAL Trade, 2009) isn't marketed as a young adult novel, but many teen readers will find it appealing.

Mahbod seraji books