From Publishers Weekly
The history of Iran in the 20th century glints through the fractured lens of the enigmatic notebook of the deaf-mute carpet mender Aga Akbar in this deeply felt tale. Born to the concubine of a Persian nobleman, Aga Akbar invents a cuneiform language inspired by that of an ancient Persian king in an effort to express himself. Aga Akbar marries the brave but bitter Tina, fathers four children and moves from tiny Saffron Village to the big city. There he finds his carpet-mender's craft replaced by mechanized drudgery, and participates in the religious fervor preceding the revolution led by the imams. Years later, Aga Akbar's son, Ishmael, who narrates most of the novel, partially translates the notebook his father filled with his cuneiform script. Ishmael, who like the author is a political exile in the Netherlands, tries to understand his father, whom he served as translator and guide almost from the day he was born. Though Ishmael feels like an extension of his father, his leftist politics and university education inevitably separate them, emotionally and physically. The narrative is sometimes choppy and overpacked, but Ishmael's complex love for his father and his country and his struggle to do what is right for both proves moving and illuminating
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From Booklist
In Abdolah's unusual novel, Iranian political exile Ishmael attempts to decipher the rudimentary writings of his virtually illiterate father, who was born in the early twentieth century to a
segih, or temporary wife, of a Persian nobleman. Under Shiite law, Aga Akbar wasn't considered an heir, so after his mother died, her brother Kazem Khan took the nine-year-old under his wing. Sensing that the deaf and mute boy yearned to express himself in more than makeshift sign language, his uncle gave him a notebook and instructed him to copy an ancient cuneiform message carved on a cave wall by the first Persian king. As Akbar grew, he learned a craft, married, and had a family. All the while, he kept a record in his own idiosyncratic code of his innermost thoughts and feelings and noted how Iran's industrialization and tumultuous political dramas touched the lives of him and his family. That story, told from Akbar's very speculatively translated perspective as supplemented by Ishmael and an omniscient narrator, proves enlightening and moving.
Donna ChavezCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
