From the International Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist Shokoofeh Azar, The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen is a stylistic and emotionally powerful novel about a large, complicated family and a love affair lasting decades.

Spanning fifty years in the history of modern Iran, this lush, layered story embraces politics and love, revolution and reconstruction as it recounts the destinies of twelve children who, one night long-ago, get lost inside a mysterious palace.

In Azar’s new novel, each lost child’s story unfolds against the backdrop of immense cultural and political transformation, where lovers must survive war and revolution to keep their flames alive, and family bonds are tested—especially those between the living and the dead. The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen is also the moving tale of one family’s efforts to preserve the richness of Iranian culture in the face of Islamic hegemony following the 1979 revolution.