Customer Reviews

Dakhmeh

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I must admit that I initially picked up this book because of the author's name. What lured me into buying it was that fact that this is his/her nom de plume. I knew it had to be ripe with opinions to which one was not safe enough label with a name. I was right. I read the book during a bout of insomnia, and one night's lack of sleep led me so far in terms of identity that I am forever grateful to Mr. Noori. Whether you agree with his views or not, the author takes you on a journey of self that really hits "home" with Iranians living in the U.S. Being true to persian culture, the story is vivid and depressing but very real.

I am drawn to books of the middle east, especially Iran. Naveed Noori, possibly wanting to avoid the Komiteh hurting him, uses a psuedonym in telling his story. Does this give you any inkling to how it is NOT okay to say negative things about the powers that be in Iran? Anyway, Noori weaves in and out from now - living and dying in a famous Iranian prison, the recent past - living in America and Tehran, and the far past as a child. He speaks of politics, the smell of foods, the sights of his home country, and how the revolution changed it all - except his love for his 'home'. i skipped over the page or two of the torture that Arash experienced in prison - i don't want that in my head. Excellent discription of the spiralling down from drug abuse and sickness....read it and learn more about the iranian mindset.

This is a grim book by an unidentified author about life in modern Tehran, twenty-some years after the Revolution that overthrew the Shah and put Khomeni in power. The protagonist is an idealistic young man growing up in the US but yearning for a home in Iran and a cause to devote his life to.

Unwise and unprepared for what he finds when he goes there, he is thrust into the shadow life that exists among both the wealthy and poor beyond the all-seeing eye of the Islamic authorities. Eventually, after a futile gesture of rebellion, he becomes a fugitive from the law and meets a sad, brutal end in a prison for political prisoners. Well written and sharply disturbing, the book reflects both dspair and a continuing hope that Iran will some day be free from a long history of tyranny.

Naveed Nori is an author's pseudonym now getting to be known for his novel Dakhmeh (Toby Press, USA, 2003). Noori's work is disturbing, antirevolutionary, and almost deliriously scornful toward Islamic totalitarianism in post revolutionary Iran.

Dakhmeh is the story of a young, irreligious man, Arash whose nostalgic compulsion drives him back to Iran, his home country that his family fled during the war of Islamic Revolution. The misery of post revolutionary Iranian life shatters his idealistic picture of life in his country and he ends up as a political prisoner somewhere between sanity and madness.

From the first page, the text of the book hits the reader as poorly written, egotistical, and sloppy. The story lacks a clear point and character development is null. Narration is mostly incoherent with alternating first person and omniscient modes, both abruptly truncating. Too much of personal pique shows on every page till the end. Even conversation between the vaguely portrayed characters feel like formal interviews, all leading to a prefigured viewpoint.

Certainly the author has plucked a significant string in the history of politics and societal transformation. His (?) criticism of media and cruel treatment of all creatures outside the fundamentalist's circle are of appeal to the humanistic mind. Still, Noori fails badly as a novelist. The motives of his (?) protagonist are diffused and Arash's obsession with socio political change is utterly boring. Lack of meaning in the protagonist's experiences is disappointingly manifest. His vindictive bitterness pours out on leaders and historical figures alike, childishly with little thought or coherence of ideas. The intended audience of the author is also hard to imagine.

In general, Dakhmeh is a frumpy text of sloppily worked political history and social dilapidation. After Arash contracts a prostitute, we read him asking himself `Where was I heading?' A reader's wish might well be `If only the author had asked himself (?) the same question before setting out to write this book.'

Basically a "Leaving Las Vegas" copy taking place in Tehran. Aresh the main character returns to Iran and goes on a path of self destruction for no valid reason. It is terrible that the trend in Iranian books and movies is that the more depressing it is made and the sorrier you are for the characters the more awards it wins.