A review by shirleytupperfreeman
Children of the Jacaranda Tree by Sahar Delijani

I had some mixed emotions about this one. The story mostly takes place in Iran in both the 1980s and the 2000s. One of the characters, as the author herself, was born to a prisoner in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. The novel is more a series of vignettes of people whose lives involved protest, imprisonment and torture, release for some, death for others and the affect all of those things had on the next generation. Some were born in prison and raised for several years by grandparents, some lost their parents entirely. All were affected. The writing is good and Sahar Delijani does a good job describing the feelings and confusions of the next generation - especially as protests begin to emerge again when they are in their 20s. I did have a hard time keeping the narrative and the characters straight. I often found myself wondering how a character fit into the larger story.