The Saffron Kitchen is a bittersweet debut novel by Yasmin Crowther set in equal parts in London and Iran.

Sara has grown up in London, the daughter of a British father and Iranian mother (like Crowther herself,) and always sensed a sadness in her mother when letters from Iran would arrive and her mother would be torn between her old life and new life. 

This culminates in an event at the opening of the novel which sends Maryam, Sara’s mother, back to the village where she grew up in Iran, that she hasn’t visited in over 40 years. What follows is an often tender, often sad unfolding of events that help Sara understand the place her mother came from.

Crowther has done a wonderful job portraying the struggle to brigde the gap between two very different cultures, and she leaves it to the reader to answer some of the hard questions about the nature of love, family obligations, and obligations to oneself. A thoughtful novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it.