The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree [Hardcover]

Farnoosh Moshiri (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004

Awarded the Black Heron Press Prize for Social Fiction. In the dozen stories in The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree, Farnoosh Moshiri combines social and political insight with the mythology of her native Iran. Her earlier books, The Bathhouse (which also won the Black Heron Press Prize for Social Fiction) and At the Wall of the Almighty, were set in Iran. The present book is set both in Iran and the United States. Several of the stories are concerned with the loss of status, the poverty, the loss of identity that immigrants often suffer. Unlike most immigrant stories, The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree deals equally with the violence and political repression visited upon those who would emigrate during the fundamentalist revolution in Iran.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Moshiri follows her powerful novels of the Islamic revolution in Iran, At the Wall of the Almighty (2000) and The Bathhouse (2001), with a dozen stories over which the revolution malignantly hovers. In "The Wall," 12 blindfolded men are driven to a wall and lined up facing it; they stand a while, some faint, then they are driven back. "A couple of us were wet with pee and vomit," says the narrator. In "Crossing," a woman works out at the club, watched by a man who is betimes raven-black-haired, graying, or completely whitened; she remembers crossing busy streets holding his hand when she was eight, the tricks he played on her in the last years, after the stroke. The flood of fear that was the revolution terrified at the time and chillingly laps at its survivors' consciousness 20 years later and thousands of miles from its immediate devastation. The struggle to understand continues, and the last stories in the book tell fables about it that gleam with wonder and, alas, with blood. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Farnoosh Moshiri was born into a literary family in Teheran, Iran. Under threat of death from the new regime, she escaped from Iran in 1983. She has lived in the United States since 1987. She graduated from the University of Houston's creative writing program where she won the Barthelme Memorial Fellowship. Crazy Dervish...is her third book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Black Heron Press (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930773705
• ISBN-13: 978-0930773700
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Iranian born writer Farnoosh Moshiri has degrees from the College of Dramatic Arts of Tehran, The University of Iowa, and University of Houston. She has published plays, short stories, and translations in Iranian literary magazines before the 1979 revolution and in anthologies published outside Iran in the 1980s. In 1983, she fled her country after a massive arrest of secular intellectuals, feminists, and political activists. She lived in refugee camps of Afghanistan and India for four years before emigrating to the U.S. in 1987. Her novels and collections include At the Wall of Almighty (Interlink 1999), The Bathhouse (Black Heron Press 2001, Beacon Press, 2002); The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree (Black Heron Press 2004), and Against Gravity (Penguin, 2006). Among other awards and fellowships, she is the recipient of Florida' Review's creative non-fiction award, Barthelme Memorial Award, Barbara Deming Award: A grant to feminist writers whose work speaks of peace and social justice; two consecutive Black Heron Awards for Social Fiction, and Valiente Award from Voices Breaking Boundaries. Her recent novel, Against Gravity, was chosen by Barnes and Noble for Discover New Writers Series and by Borders Books in January Original Voices selection. The Bathhouse, her second novel, has been translated into several European and Asian languages. She has taught literature, playwriting, and creative writing in Universities of Tehran, Kabul, Houston, and Syracuse. Currently, she lives in Houston, where she works on her new novel and teaches creative writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eclectic collection of stories, May 5, 2004

By 

Retired musician (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree (Hardcover)

Here is a collection of stories by an author who is known in this country primarily as a novelist, but this eclectic collection of short and long stories indicates that she has equally mastered the art of writing short stories.

Several of the stories in this collection deal with the fate of the political prisoners in Iran as do two of Farnoosh Moshiri's novels, At the Wall of Almighty and The Bathhouse. If you have read those novels, you'll find that the common theme, a leitmotif perhaps, of the "wall" returns in her short storey by that same title. Here again she takes us to the wall where innocent people are executed or tortured, all in the name of God. And, in another story in this book, we meet the "Bricklayer" who is the ever present witness of the execution of the innocent people everywhere.

Some of these stories deal with the plight of newly arriving immigrants in the U.S. However, these stories don't just talk about the loss of status, financial and social, that the first generation immigrants often face in their new country. The refugees in these stories fled their countries after wars, revolutions or for fear of prosecution. So, in addition to what other immigrants experience, they also have to deal with the memory of their horrible experiences and the deep sense of loss of their homeland.

Farnoosh Moshiri's stories are as always full of mysterious images and symbols that often create an exotic atmosphere and the fairy-tale like story of The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree is an example of how she can tell a story that can read like an old Persian fairy tale, but refer to the present time. Reading Crazy Dervish will take you to another time and place, but at the end you'll realize the story is about now and here. It is a timeless story, as most good fairy tales are.

I recommend this book to everyone.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Master of painting in words, April 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree (Hardcover)

These are not stories about the atrocities of the Islamic government that seized the power after the popular Iranian revolution of 1979. These are timeless stories about the injustice and brutality of man against his own kind for greed and power that has been happening since the beginning of time. The Dickensian "Gas City" versus the utopian "Raz City" in "Crazy Dervish..." is a metaphor for any city in the world ruined by Capitalist exploitation and injustice. The Orwellian tortures in "The Wall" are deja vu to anyone familiar with the brutality of the "Death Squads" in Latin America. Moshiri's stories are amazingly picturesque. She is master of painting in words. Her recurrent use of the timeless "Bricklayer" and the "Wall of the Almighty" (where the executions take place) reminds one of Dali's sceneries. A fascinating reading. Highly recommended.