-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel
by Dina Nayeri
Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that "all fate is written in the blood," and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba's world has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister's experience gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.
Filled with a colorful cast of characters and presented in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with modern Western prose, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a tale about memory and the importance of controlling one's own fate.
"From the imprint that brought you Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner; the sort of embracing and embraceable culturally far-reaching fiction Riverhead does best." - Library Journal
"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." - Kirkus
"Nayeri crams so much into her story, especially Saba's distracting fiction of her sister's life in the United States, that her lyrical evocation of a vanishing Iran gets lost in an irritating narrative tangle." - Publishers Weekly
"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." - Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles
"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." - Jean Kwok, author of Girl in Translation
This information about A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dina Nayeri was born in Tehran during the revolution and immigrated to Oklahoma at ten years old. She has a BA from Princeton and a Master of Education and MBA from Harvard. She is a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teaching Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
If you liked A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, try these:
by Afabwaje Kurian
Published 2025
Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria teetering between post-colonial dependency and self-rule, Before the Mango Ripens examines the enduring themes of faith, disillusionment, and the search for belonging. Both epic and intimate, Afabwaje Kurian's debut announces a brilliant new talent for readers of Imbolo Mbue and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
by Susanne Pari
Published 2023
Inspired by her own family's experiences following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Susanne Pari explores the entangled lives within an Iranian American family grappling with generational culture clashes, the roles imposed on women, and a tragic accident that forces them to reconcile their guilt or forfeit their already tenuous bonds.
by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Published 2021
International-award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and--most importantly--how they find their way back to each other.
Published as The First Woman in the UK.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
