Someday, you and me – we’ll do great things. We’ll live life for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who make things happen.

1950, Tehran. Seven-year-old Ellie lives in comfort, wanting for nothing, until the death of her father brings a drastic change in fortune. At school, she meets Homa. Together, the girls play games, wander through the Grand Bazaar and share their ambitions of becoming ‘lion women’ and the first generation of women fully working in Iran.

Opportunity allows Ellie and her mother to return to their bourgeois life, and Ellie’s memories of Homa fade. But years later, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

As the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. 

Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transform our lives.