Redolent with the scent of lilac and oleander blossoms, and bursting
with the flavors of quinces and overripe plums, Strand of a Thousand
Pearls is the story of the imagined and actual marriages of the
Azizyan girls, their years of yearning, restless and impatient, and the
truth of their engagements, miles away from the enchanted realm and
imaginary heroes of their dreams.
Six years ago, Dorit Rabinyan burst onto the scene with Persian
Brides, a novel that established her as a writer of incandescent
spirit with a gift for spinning wry, magical tales about the vagaries of
love and marriage. In Strand of a Thousand Pearls, she has given us
a bitter-sweet fable about desires fulfilled and denied--about married
love and carnal love, about mother's love and the kind of love that
vanishes one night without warning, like an evaporated dream.