From Publishers Weekly
Parvin's playful debut is a "novel-in-verse," an extended narrative poem written in free verse, which begins when an Iranian academic named Pirooz journeys from New York to the Arizona desert under the weight of a growing despair. As he contemplates ending his life, a pair of cacti assume the forms of the great Persian poets, Rumi and Hafez, and Pirooz begins a freewheeling dialogue, or dardedel, with the two figures on the subjects of art, love, Persian history and modern Iranian politics. Their conversation alleviates Pirooz's suicidal urges, and he heads back to New York. But the restless spirits follow him. Hafez reappears as a Manhattan cabbie, and Rumi takes on various guises, including that of an adolescent Puerto Rican boy. Hafez falls in love with a precocious, poetic 14-year-old named Mitra, who eventually figures out her would-be lover's ancient identity. Pirooz cautions Hafez about the obvious dangers of courting a modern American adolescent, but the irrepressible poet pursues a romance, leading to his arrest and a subsequent trial. The well-balanced chemistry between the three men carries the narrative, and while several scenes get a bit silly-the trial is especially over the top-the story remains reasonably intriguing. Some of the meditative conversations fall flat, but Parvin's dialogues are mostly entertaining, and the author wisely sticks to a lighthearted take on his two legendary reincarnations.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Publisher
A most unusual novel is Manoucher Parvin’s DARDEDEL: Rumi Hafez & Love in New York. For starters, it’s written in free verse. For another, it contrasts the world of 13th and 14th century Persia with that of present day New York, by bringing back to life the famed Persian poets Rumi and Hafez, who reincarnate themselves to help a suicidal Persian-American professor. It provides a double love story (is not Hafez still considered today to be one of the ablest poets of love?) and also touches on the nature of things (which is one of the reasons Rumi is still widely read throughout the world).
The characters and plot set up wonderful interactions between the professor and the poets, who try to reconcile their "Old-World Ways" with those of the "New," and nothing serves this dialogue and dilemma better than the relationship that forms between Hafez – who is working as a Taxi driver – and Mitra, a precocious 14-year old girl he falls in love with after picking her up. That was the favored age for romance in his day. So why, he wonders, does it cause the lovers such difficulties now? All the while, Parvin, through Professor Pirooz (who is despondent not only over the lack of love in his own life but the state of contemporary society, its values, its poetry, and the role of the artist), has his chance to expound upon our current society’s shortcomings and the special problems encountered by immigrants and those out-of-step with contemporary customs.
DARDEDEL is not only richly layered and endowed with lively, off-beat characters you can laugh with and laugh at, but provides a wonderful introduction to these two great and still widely read Persian poets. Filled with myth, history, poetry, humor, and unexpected twists and turns of plot, Parvin has created an entirely original work of fiction, where one also learns a considerable amount about historical and contemporary Persia (Iran) and the nature of Love.
