• Food and Travel
• Issue 2

Yasmin Crowther’s debut novel, The Saffron Kitchen, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, tells the story of an Iranian woman embittered by guilt and burdened with the pain of lost love.

But thoughts of her love and the warm colours and flavours of Iran are forged in her memory forever, even after moving to the foreign and lush greens of England.

One autumn day, Maryam Mazar, now an old woman, is still mourning the death of her elder sister when she is confronted with her troubled past.

But this confrontation has tragic consequences for her pregnant daughter Sara.

The blow is so great that Maryam is compelled to leave her mild-mannered, loving British husband and daughter to go back to Mazareh, a remote village hidden in the snow-capped mountains of northeastern Iran. Mazareh is where Maryam’s story began and she returns hoping to find the source of her anger.

Crowther, who grew up in an Anglo-Iranian household, approaches her characters with great honesty and breathtaking sensitivity as though she had lived with these women, both in her mind and in her life. This is not just the result of a couple of trips to Iran, as she's said: "to do some research for her novel".

Crowther, with care and cunning, opens a window to the plight of Iranian women who have somehow managed to find love and hope while being in the throes of an often oppressive patriarchal society.

The Saffron Kitchen is the story of a human experience: the story of love and hate, pain of exile, and the power of homecoming to relieve that pain. Maryam leaves her home in search of her true identity and future, which she finds by embracing her painful past.