My Father's Notebook: A Novel of Iran [Paperback]

Kader Abdolah (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2007

When he was a boy, Aga Akbar, the deaf-mute illegitimate son of a Persian nobleman, traveled with his uncle to a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain. Once there, he was to copy a three-thousand-year-old cuneiform inscription—an order of the first king of Persia—as a means of freeing himself from his emotional confinement. For the remainder of his life, Aga Akbar used these cuneiform characters to fill a notebook with writings only he could understand. Years later, his son, Ishmael—a political dissident in exile—is attempting to translate the notebook . . . and in the process tells his father's story, his own, and the story of twentieth-century Iran.

A stunning and ambitious novel by a singular literary talent, My Father's Notebook is at once a masterful chronicle of a culture's troubled voyage into modernity and the poignant, timeless tale of a son's enduring love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The history of Iran in the 20th century glints through the fractured lens of the enigmatic notebook of the deaf-mute carpet mender Aga Akbar in this deeply felt tale. Born to the concubine of a Persian nobleman, Aga Akbar invents a cuneiform language inspired by that of an ancient Persian king in an effort to express himself. Aga Akbar marries the brave but bitter Tina, fathers four children and moves from tiny Saffron Village to the big city. There he finds his carpet-mender's craft replaced by mechanized drudgery, and participates in the religious fervor preceding the revolution led by the imams. Years later, Aga Akbar's son, Ishmael, who narrates most of the novel, partially translates the notebook his father filled with his cuneiform script. Ishmael, who like the author is a political exile in the Netherlands, tries to understand his father, whom he served as translator and guide almost from the day he was born. Though Ishmael feels like an extension of his father, his leftist politics and university education inevitably separate them, emotionally and physically. The narrative is sometimes choppy and overpacked, but Ishmael's complex love for his father and his country and his struggle to do what is right for both proves moving and illuminating
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In Abdolah's unusual novel, Iranian political exile Ishmael attempts to decipher the rudimentary writings of his virtually illiterate father, who was born in the early twentieth century to a segih, or temporary wife, of a Persian nobleman. Under Shiite law, Aga Akbar wasn't considered an heir, so after his mother died, her brother Kazem Khan took the nine-year-old under his wing. Sensing that the deaf and mute boy yearned to express himself in more than makeshift sign language, his uncle gave him a notebook and instructed him to copy an ancient cuneiform message carved on a cave wall by the first Persian king. As Akbar grew, he learned a craft, married, and had a family. All the while, he kept a record in his own idiosyncratic code of his innermost thoughts and feelings and noted how Iran's industrialization and tumultuous political dramas touched the lives of him and his family. That story, told from Akbar's very speculatively translated perspective as supplemented by Ishmael and an omniscient narrator, proves enlightening and moving. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060598727
• ISBN-13: 978-0060598723
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,322,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Appealing characters, accessible history--try it!, June 11, 2007

By 

Wehrly (Redmond, WA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Father's Notebook: A Novel of Iran (Paperback)

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....

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Father and son . . ., February 21, 2010

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Father's Notebook: A Novel of Iran (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stumbled-Upon Gem, September 8, 2009

By 

M. Covington (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Father's Notebook: A Novel of Iran (Paperback)

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.