The Septembers of Shiraz: A Novel (P.S.)

by Dalia Sofer

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Edition: Paperback

Publication Date: May 01, 2008

Publisher: Harper Perennial

ISBN: 0061130419

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3459

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List price: ~~$13.95~~

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Reviews

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Did I read the same book as everyone else?, September 26, 2008

After looking at the rave reviews for The Septembers of Shiraz, I chose it as my book club selection. Now I'm wondering what all the hype was about? While I find the subject matter compelling and heartbreaking, I found the writing and book to be neither. The characters lacked depth and were 2 dimensional at best, the ending was contrived and way too simplistic, and I felt as though I were hearing the story from someone who'd heard it second hand. When I finished the novel, I read "about the author," and it turns out I was right- I was hearing it third hand.
I had high hopes for this book, and I was very dissappointed.

Compelling and personal tale, but not very well-written, September 9, 2008

The Septembers of Shiraz is a 3 1/2 star book that I would have upgraded to 4 stars if immediately after finishing it I hadn't started reading Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Both books are based on the personal stories of the authors' fathers, each of whom ended up emmigrating from the Middle East with his family as a result of religious and cultural persecution. This book is written as a novel, and Sabar's is non-fiction, but the greatest dissimilarity is in the quality of the writing. And that is where "The Septembers of Shiraz" comes up short.

This book, about an Iranian Jewish family during the cultural revolution which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic fundamentalists to power, is divided into the points of view of the four family members: Isaac Amin, a wealthy jeweler, his wife, Farnaz, their daughter Shirin, and their son, Parviz. Isaac is jailed on charges of being a Zionist and his wife and daughter must try to cope in a Tehran in which the lower classes have power for the first time in their lives. Parviz, in the weakest of the tales, is studying at university in New York and living with a family of Hasidic Jews.

You can tell on reading the book that the tale is deeply personal to the author and one which she researched rigorously, from the conditions in Iranian prisons to what life was like for ordinary people during the revolution. It's also one that needs to be told. If you know nothing about the Islamic revolution in Iran, the book is likely to be compelling. But chapters don't so much end as they just stop abruptly, sections are written in the wrong tense, and for these and other reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I found myself picking the book up and putting it down again a few pages later, whereas I read over half of Safar's book in one sitting.

Sofer can perhaps be forgiven some of the clunky writing in that English is not her first language. But then it isn't Khaled Hosseini's first language either, and both The Kite Runner and One Thousand Splendid Suns are gorgeously written. If you want to learn about what was lost in the cultural revolution in Iran and read just one book about it, even Reading Lolita in Tehran, which makes what was lost in the revolution more poignant still, would be a better choice. Sofer has made a good first effort and one which is worth reading, just with lower expectations that those which the other reviews here might give you. Perhaps I'm less moved by the book than I ought to be because while Sofer makes you feel the pain of the Amin family and what they have lost, she never really gives you a sense of greater context. But I just finished the book today and it's already starting to slip away in the face of a tale (Safar's) that is full of more detail, more history and that broader context and is, somehow, more moving.

Sorrow and hope in the hands of a master storyteller, September 2, 2008

Masterpiece is defined as the superlative work of an artist and no word better describes Dalia Sofer's debut novel. "The Septembers of Shiraz" amazes by its sheer quietness and simplicity, and its impact is powerful for such understated prose.

It's 1981 in Tehran. Isaac Amin, a wealthy jeweler and gemologist, is accused of being a Zionist spy and is arrested by the Revolutionary Guards. Two years prior, the Shah of Iran, long reviled as a puppet of the Western world, had been deposed. The revolution that ousted the shah is now paving the way for fundamentalist Islam and the emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini. It doesn't matter that Isaac is not a subversive; it is enough that he is Jewish and successful.

Isaac's son, Parviz, is an architectural student in New York. As the chaos in Iran worsens and his father languishes in jail, beaten and tortured, the young man is forced to grow up and fend for himself without his parents' remittances. Along the way, he's befriended by his Jewish landlord from whom Parviz learns some valuable lessons in faith, survival and choices.

Meanwhile, Isaac's wife, Farnaz, desperately searches for her husband. She begins to see firsthand the rapid collapse of her country and realizes that life will never be the same again for anyone of them.

What's of note in Sofer's style is her assured command. From beginning `til end, the novel is orderly, accessible, evocative, and affecting, devoid of the trickery of excessive sentimental narrative. (To see this adapted on film would be a pleasure, especially if helmed by Iran's premier director, the equally understated and talented Majid Majidi.)

In one of Parviz's classes, his professor lectures that..

"A good structure...must have two characteristics: strength and beauty. For a building to be strong, it must accomplish what it was designed to do, and do so efficiently, without an excess of stone, glass, steel. For it to be beautiful, it must reflect its maker's definition of beauty, whatever that definition may be. For only then can it be said that the structure exists honestly."

And that is exactly what Sofer's writing is--strong, beautiful and honest. It's appropriate that the author's name is Sofer, which is Hebrew for `writer', for the label is borne well by this young author. Through Isaac, she has given us an "education in grief," but more importantly, she has given us an education in hope. This is writing from the soul, the best kind there is.

A great, poignant story, August 4, 2008

The story of a jewish man and his family caught in the aftermath of the "departure" of the Shah of Iran in the 1980's. This is the kind of book you can't let go of and you need to keep reading. You feel for the characters as the chapters unfold.

I enjoyed Dalia Sofer's debut; try 'In the Country of Men' next, August 1, 2008

I enjoyed Dalia Sofer's debut novel, though I'm having a bit of a difficult time aligning my reading experience with the notable NYT book review where they comment "it's impossible to predict whether Sofer's novel will become a classic, but it certainly stands a chance." That's quite a statement.

The tale is loosely based on Ms. Sofer's own experiences of a Jewish Persian upbringing. That Ms. Sofer's own father, Simon, was also imprisoned in the early days of the Islamic Republic of Iran surely brings added resonance to the novel. It's not hard to see Dalia Sofer as Shirin, daughter of the book's protagonist, Issac Amin. Her work 'lifts the veil' (as reviewers have deftly said about it) on what things were like in Iran circa 1979 - 1982. [Sofer and her family fled Iran when she was 10. She was born in 1972.]

A similar work to try out is Hisham Matar's excellent In the Country of Men. Replace Iran with Libya, but the idea's the same: a quasi-autobiographical work by a talented debut novelist who, as a child, watched a beloved father be snatched up and imprisoned by the new regime.


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							October 7, 2008


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