Customer Reviews

My Father's Notebook

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A slightly mysterious tale, due to the father's limited ability to communicate, which seems a great symbol for the "disconnects" that must crop up between generations in tumultuous eras/places. Even though the book doesn't really get inside the head of the main character (the father), you still develop an enormous amount of sympathy and admiration for him. Would be a great book club read, with plenty to discuss.

A good book for those interested in foreign literature from this part of the world, but who thought the Kite Runner too contrived and violent, and find Orhan Pamuk a little hard to follow. (I haven't read much Iranian literature in translation, so can't put it in any context there.)

PS I bought this book on my way to Amsterdam, and while very little of the story takes place in the Netherlands, it made for an interesting connection. I wouldn't mind reading more by this author about the immigrant experience in that country....

This autobiographical novel is a lot of things. Part politics, history, geography, religion, it also takes its place among the growing literature of refugees and displacement. Meanwhile, it tells a heart-felt personal story about an educated man and his father, a deaf-mute carpet mender. Set in Iran during many decades of the twentieth century, it includes historical events and social changes and ends with the arrival of the year 2000. The two shahs, Mossadegh, and Khomeini take their time on stage, each leaving their mark for better or worse. The Soviet Union looms along a 1200-mile border to the north; Saddam Hussein declares war; the West extracts oil. Meanwhile, Aga Akbar, the father of the title, lives a life absorbed by a confounding world, dependent first on an opium-addicted uncle and then a son, Ishmael, who is writing his story after his death.

The mystery at the center of the book is our inability to know what Aga Akbar thinks and feels. Trapped in a sensory world without hearing or speech, he communicates by a simple, private sign language, but the novel makes no attempt to represent his actual experience. This is all the more tantalizing because he has kept an indecipherable notebook written in cuneiform, which he has first seen on the wall of a mountain cave near his village.

The book is also Ishmael's story, growing up before his time as he cares for his father, their roles reversed, especially in his efforts to help his father understand the world. At one point he tries to help him comprehend the solar system by showing him a picture of astronauts on the moon. The deep love of father for son is made more poignant by their separation, first as Ishmael goes off to university in Tehran and becomes an active member of the communist party, working for the overthrow of one oppressive government after another, then as he flees to the West, to eventually find sanctuary in the Netherlands, where he is writing this book. Well translated from Dutch, it deserves a wide readership as we come ourselves to understand a world we have been deaf and blind to.

I found this book while, literally, looking alphabetically through authors at the local library. I'm not sure what drew me into this particular book as opposed to all the other "A" author selections, but I'm quite glad I found it.

This book is a rich and sweet depiction of a country through the eyes and situation of a man. The landscape of Iran, its culture, religion and conflict are interwoven with the everyday life of father and son. It doesn't play history and revolution with a heavy hand, but rather as incidents on the periphery of an individual life. The complex relationship between a deaf-mute father and a son (for all intents and purposes) born to be the right-hand man of his dreamy dad is a beautiful, intense and curious thing.

"My Father's Notebook" is an easy read. And by that, I don't mean that it isn't evocative or thought provoking or, heaven forbid, that it is simple--merely that it's easy to escape into. The translation is well done and the prose flows as well.

How sad that this little gem is so completely unknown. Besides being a lovely story of a relationship between a young Iranian and his eccentric father, it provides a very human glimpse into life in a country whose men are regularly maligned by the west for their patriarchal brutality. The men in this sensitive tale are anything but... I am not sure whether this is a memoir or pure fiction, but I found it delightful, and have lent it to several friends who felt the same. Books like this are needed to counter some of the sensationalist dramas of oppressed Muslim women which are so rampant these days... Not to make light of the oppression that does exist, but somewhere there should be room for stories of sensitive men as well..

An easy book to read. Each chapter is a complete story although the characters remain the same throughout the book. The book is one of the best for discovering the rural culture of Iran. It includes: poetry, humor, hardship, trials, adventure, pathos, hope and discovery.
I had borrowed the book I read, but upon finishing it, I immediately bought one for my own library.

Jim Leach