cover image The Quince Seed Potion

The Quince Seed Potion

Morteza Baharloo. Bridge Works Publishing Company, $23.95 (241pp) ISBN 978-1-882593-87-3

The unswerving loyalty of an indentured servant sold to a family of khans in 1928 is the prism through which Morteza Baharloo explores the 20th-century history of Iran in The Quince Seed Potion. Sarveali knows no other life than the one he leads as the personal slave of Teimour Khan, a spoiled, handsome young aristocrat. Neither marriage nor opium addiction can distract Sarveali from his duties; it's only death and the Iranian revolution that separate him from the family he reveres at the end of this vivid, uneven first novel. .