The sky is still purple

Arghavān left Iran for the Netherlands to leave her past behind. But memories are something you take with you wherever you go. The young woman runs a small second-hand shop in Amsterdam, and while she learns the stories of strangers, she recalls the smells of the marketplace, the calls of birds and the shadows of the mountains in her native Tabriz. She is constantly haunted by thoughts of a childhood marked by her mother's departure and the slow disintegration of her beloved father's personality as he succumbs to opium. At the same time, she is trying hard to put down roots in a new country.

 She gradually befriends Anna, a deaf dancer, and the eccentric Johan, who listens to trees, and falls in love with a young musician, Mees. Yet Arghavān is still searching for an answer to the question of what it means to belong somewhere. Is home a place, a person, a language? Or is it something we carry within ourselves?

 Sholeh Rezazadeh has written an extraordinarily tender novel about memory, loneliness and the desire for closeness that captivates with its imagery, subtlety and the main character's ability to listen to the world – to people, landscapes and trees.