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The Ruby Tear Catcher made the 'short list' in The Man Asian Literary Award contest, an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer.
About The Ruby Tear Catcher:
While a work of fiction, the startling and compelling storyline and characters
in Nahid Sewell’s The Ruby Tear Catcher: an Iranian Woman’s Story of
Intolerance (Summerhill Press) are based on true events and real people.
Described as “a powerful and wonderful story” by former 1979 Iranian hostage,
Kathryn Koob, this debut novel provides readers an enchanting glimpse at the
beauty of Persian culture while laying bare the realities of the past thirty
years’ transformation Iran has endured. Most importantly, it gives a voice to
the women who suffer under cultural and religious traditions that see them as
second class.
Everyday life in Iran changed radically with the arrival of the Ayatollah
Khomeini and the Islamic Republic, particularly for women. The story focuses on
one young woman, Leila, an innocent victim of the rising tide of fundamentalism
that swept Iran during the revolution. Jailed in Tehran’s most-feared prison,
Leila sustains herself through memories revealed in flashbacks to her childhood
days in Tehran. Leila comes to the United States to attend college. On the eve
of her graduation, personal tragedy forces her to return to Iran where she
finds dramatic changes. She must adapt to Islamic law, dress in hijab and live
under the restrictive rule of the Islamic Republic. Once a colorful landscape
of cultural freedom, the Tehran of her youth has been replaced by a cruel,
radicalized husk of a city where sexual segregation, religious fervor and an
overriding sense of fear pervades the streets. In this time of growing tensions
between her place of birth and the country she calls home, it was the author’s
hope her readers would see that regardless our nationality, we are not that
different from one another.
Inspired by her experiences growing up in Iran, Sewell is uniquely placed to
convey the magnitude of change that ravaged her homeland over the past thirty
years. While her novel charts the social, cultural, political and religious
regression in Iran, she focuses on the plight of Iranian women whose rights and
freedoms have been stolen and substituted with systematic abuse and persecution.
Despite the fact that she is not trying to make a political statement, the
author will not be able to return to her country as a result of publishing this
novel. She felt none-the-less compelled to tell the story and present its
message of tolerance, to help everyone understand that we are all equally
deserving of respect and dignity, regardless of nationality, race, religion or
gender. Offering context for the book, Sewell, along with her American husband
who lived in a fundamentalist Christian community for twenty years, drew on
their life’s experiences, giving color and authenticity to this fictional
account of an Iranian woman’s struggle against intolerance and fanaticism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nahid Sewell was born in Tehran, Iran, before the Islamic Revolution. After
finishing high school there, she came to the United States where she obtained a BA and MBA from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Following
graduation, Nahid began a successful career in Information Technology. While
holding a full-time position and raising a family, she began writing a series
of technical articles and did some speaking engagements. She has written
hundreds of articles for trade publications and four nonfiction books. The
author is available for interview. You may find out more about the novel and
Nahid Sewell at
http://www.TheRubyTearCatcher.com.
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