Book: The Temporary Bride: A Memoir Of Love And Food In Iran

Jennifer Klinec

JENNIFER KLINES was always an adventurer. Born in Canada, she spent her 20s in an uneasily anchored wanderlust, inhabiting London’s corporate world by weekday, but would find herself in Istanbul or Naples by Friday night.

She travelled to eat and to learn and, by her early 30s, had set up a small cookery school. Then she flew to Iran — where she met a brusque, unsmiling, dark-haired man called Vahid.

Over a short month, she fell in love with the man and the food, the soups and the meats, the sesame and honeyed sweets and rosewater.

The Temporary Bride is a beautifully written window into a world few of us have ever entered: contemporary Iran in all its complexity.

Its sprawling cities and street-side eateries come to life, but most vivid is the portrait of ordinary Iranians: cooking, sharing, living, in a world where Westerners are unwelcome. A book for travellers — of the world and the senses.