Clarisse Ayvazian is the model 1960s wife and mother. She leads an unremarkable life with her well-respected engineer husband and three children, tucked away in a wealthy, middle-class neighbourhood of Abadan.
But her tranquillity ends forever with the arrival of an enigmatic Armenian family across the street. The debonair widower, his beguiling tween daughter, and his mother, a domineering aristocrat with an exotic past, steal their way into Clarisse’s home. Suddenly, passions, politics, and a plague of locusts whip up emotions she never knew she had. Struggling to understand her new found discontent, Clarisse must face up to the life she never had – and whether she should take it now.
With subtlety and humour, Pirzad has crafted a deeply personal insight into the hopes and aspirations of Iranians in the period leading up to the Islamist Revolution.
“A rising star of Iranian literature, Zoya Pirzad transcends the everyday with her luminous writing.”
Elle
"A sympathetic glimpse of pre-revolutionary Iran, Things We Left Unsaid shows how disrupted families can continue to function through compromise and understanding."
The Herald
"Elegant, thoughtful, and entirely mesmerising… a compelling read."
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