Book Description: The Street of Good Fortune is the compelling memoir of Iranian-Canadian Maryam Manteghi who goes to Bosnia in the early 2000s to follow in the footsteps of her then heroine, Christiane Amanpour. When she is diagnosed with breast-cancer at the age of just 34 her world spins out of control, propelling her to a new life, a new city and even a new heroine; the stylish and sexy Kyle Minogue. Humorous, witty and light-hearted, this memoir is more than a cancer-diary. It's the story of the little triumphs that make up a woman's journey from strength to strength.

EXCERPT

My grandmother was one of Tehran’s rare female drivers in the 1950s. Because her husband was epileptic, she was the only person in the family who drove, a skill she carried over to Canada, taking me to ballet lessons and picking me up from school. I was not thrilled when my mother put her in charge of transportation. My mother was notoriously late in picking me up, but my grandmother was always on time and often early, which meant that she would park the car, march into the ballet school full of long-legged girls in pink tights and blonde buns stretching before class, and yell out my name into the tiny building. Mortified, I would attempt to control the upward movement of my plié and the corresponding arm position as my name was bellowed across the chinking of the piano. Despite the untold number of embarrassing incidents that ensued when my grandmother arrived early, to school, to ballet, or in front of the train station to pick me up, I always knew that she was an extraordinary woman. Not just because we adored each other and fought over the remote control, me vying for Oprah while she was on team The Price is Right. Not because I was her official interpreter for The Young and the Restless, our favourite soap opera, a post I held from the age of 12, during which I learned to translate scandalous phrases like “Nikki, I want to make love to you” into Farsi’s “Mesle eenke mikhad ba Nikki karhaye bad bokone,” giggling with delight as she and I exchanged knowing looks under the disapproving eye of my mother. Not for any of those reasons, but because she taught me to be myself, to be fearless, and to love without restraint.

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