A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

Spellbinding in its narration, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is the story of an Iranian girl who, separated from her mother and twin sister during the turmoil following the Iranian Revolution, invents a rich, imaginative world in which they live.

Growing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Beatles cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and sister have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for their company, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied. All her life she had been taught that "fate is in the blood," which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. Thus, over the next several years, as Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life, a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in postrevolutionary Iran, her sister's life-as Saba envisions it-gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.

Filled with a colorful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose and tells a story about the importance of controlling your own fate.

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A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

Spellbinding in its narration, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is the story of an Iranian girl who, separated from her mother and twin sister during the turmoil following the Iranian Revolution, invents a rich, imaginative world in which they live.

Growing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Beatles cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and sister have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for their company, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied. All her life she had been taught that "fate is in the blood," which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. Thus, over the next several years, as Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life, a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in postrevolutionary Iran, her sister's life-as Saba envisions it-gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.

Filled with a colorful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose and tells a story about the importance of controlling your own fate.

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A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

by Dina Nayeri

Narrated by Sneha Mathan

Unabridged — 15 hours, 28 minutes

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

by Dina Nayeri

Narrated by Sneha Mathan

Unabridged — 15 hours, 28 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

$22.95
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Overview

Spellbinding in its narration, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is the story of an Iranian girl who, separated from her mother and twin sister during the turmoil following the Iranian Revolution, invents a rich, imaginative world in which they live.

Growing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Beatles cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and sister have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for their company, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied. All her life she had been taught that "fate is in the blood," which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. Thus, over the next several years, as Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life, a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in postrevolutionary Iran, her sister's life-as Saba envisions it-gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.

Filled with a colorful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose and tells a story about the importance of controlling your own fate.


Editorial Reviews

author of Blame Michelle Huneven

Captivating. It reminds us how storytelling can save our lives. A brilliant debut.”

New York Times bestselling author Karen Thompson Walker

Charming and engrossing, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a vivid and evocative story about the places we love, the places we long for—and the places we can only imagine.”

author of the national bestseller Girl in Translat Jean Kwok

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is pure magic: lyrical, captivating, funny, and heartbreaking. Entering the world of the intriguing Saba Hafezi and her friends in a seaside village in northern Iran, I lost my heart.”

SoundCommentary.com

This is a very revealing story of what it was really like to live as a young woman in Iran in the 1980s, a tumultuous time, and what it is like perhaps, even now…Sneha Mathan reads with a convincing accent, taking Saba from her youth to young adulthood; she also uses her voice effectively to show how different her sister’s life in America is.”

AudioFile

Narrator Sneha Mathan uses subtle tones and a soft voice to take listeners into the emotional world of the protagonist…The story is told with a poetic undercurrent of emotion, and the listener will be moved.”

Kirkus Reviews

Elegant aspirational novel of life in post-revolutionary Iran. "The whole town knows the story--the real one--though no one talks about it, because that's our way. We prefer pretty lies to ugly truths." Twin sisters Saba and Mahtab Hafezi live at the end of the universe--or, more specifically, in a tiny rice-farming village deep in the Iranian interior, having moved from Tehran to escape the eyes and hands of the mullahs and revolutionary guards. The place is no Macondo: There's precious little magic to it and a lot of dust and grime. Still, in Nayeri's (Another Jekyll, Another Hyde, 2012, etc.) richly imaginative chronicle, everyone dreams there, not least Saba, whose expectations crumble in the face of a reality for which she's not prepared, having instead devoted herself to moving to America and studying endless English word lists in anticipation ("What is abalone?" she wonders). Her mother, a small force of nature, is a fierce champion, though she's not happy that Saba is out in the sticks: "I won't have her raised in this place...wasting her days with village kids, stuck under a scarf memorizing Arabic and waiting to be arrested." Alas, a mother's protectiveness is not a big enough shield, and Saba finds herself caught up in events much larger than she can imagine. It takes a village full of sometimes odd, sometimes ordinary people to afford Saba the wherewithal to realize her dreams, which take her far, far from there. Lyrical, humane and hopeful; a welcome view of the complexities of small-town life, in this case in a place that inspires fear instead of sympathy.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169664775
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date: 01/31/2013
Edition description: Unabridged
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