As part of our Camden Conference series, Portland Public Library is proud to host Afarin Bellisario, a global leader in the field of tech and innovation who has taken a turn from her usual STEM world to pen her debut novel, “Silenced Whispers”. This book is a return not just to the city of her youth, Tehran, but to her childhood joy in writing. It is also the culmination of a personal pursuit for a better understanding of the history of Iran – one that goes beyond the Revolution of 1979 to drill into the legacies of Russo-British Imperialism. A history that is defining today’s Iran.

Grounded in the turn of the 20th century, Silenced Whispers is a historical fiction that highlights the internal and external pressures on young woman in Iran in the face of patriarchy and colonialism. Though historically and culturally unique, the tensions Bellisario explores echo across time and place offering the reader a world both familiar and removed. In navigating these tensions – internal/external, domestic/political, rural/urban, traditional/technological, past/present – the author wields magical realism in the Persian, Arabic, and European traditions to counterpoint, highlight, and progress the plot. The result is a timeless narrative that offers a little bit of something for everyone.

Please join us Saturday, January 29th, from 5:30 to 7:00 to hear from Afarin Bellisario herself about her book, her experience writing it, and its historical context!