Customer Reviews

The Septembers of Shiraz (P.S.)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent first novel. Dalia Sofer tells the story of the Amin family, a wealthy Iranian-Jewish family caught up in the ugly repression that followed the overthrow of the shah, in a quiet, dignified style, with detail building upon detail. Jeweler Isaac Amin is snatched from his home and imprisoned by the Revolutionary Guards, for no other reason than the fact that he is affluent and Jewish. His efforts to convince his captors that he is no Israeli spy and end his Kafkaesque tortures and interrogations are described very convincingly.

Particularly notable are Sofer's efforts to portray the ideology of Amin's captors and their sympathizers and to give them a chance to speak for themselves. She does not countenance political murder, religious repression, or anti-semitism, far from it, and her sympathies are with the oppressed; but she does give her villains a voice. Why are some people the masters and some the servants? Was the Iranian upper class complicit in the repression conducted by the shah's goons before his overthrow? These are some of the questions that she asks and these help give the book considerable nuance.

I would have given this book five stars, but the ending failed to satisfy the emotional build-up of the previous 100 pages. The book seemed to peter out rather than to end in a meaningful way.

This novel is a poignant tale of a family caught in the changing of the guard, transported into a world where their every move is suspect. On one uneventful day in 1981, after the Iranian revolution, gem trader Isaac Amin is arrested by the Revolutionary Guards in his Tehran office and transported to prison, where he is interrogated. As a Jew, Amin is immediately suspect, especially since his lucrative business takes him frequently to Israel. Now his entire world is threatened, the government suspicious that he is a spy for Israel. It doesn't help that Amin's brother has been smuggling alcohol over the border, in strict defiance of the law. Muslim fanaticism is on the rise, Isaac's family in the crosshairs, as Jews and because of their wealthy lifestyle.

While Isaac is left in a dank cell with other men, all to be systematically interrogated, he ponders the viability of ever leaving this place, let alone surviving the increasingly brutal interrogation techniques used to obtain the desired responses form the prisoners. Daily he listens to the firing squads, the moans from fellow prisoners who have been tortured and the muezzin's call to prayer. Regretting that he could not inform his wife, Farnaz, of his dire circumstances, Amin looks inward, revisiting the early days of their marriage, before they became careless of the relationship. Learning of her husband's fate, Farnaz is thrust into despair, fighting the depression that overwhelms her whenever she considers life without Isaac, navigating the days as if a sleepwalker.

Nine-year-old Shirin is told at first that her father is on an extended trip; but she is aware of her mother's anguish and seeks to alleviate Farnaz' pain by hoarding her own fears, hiding files she has stolen from the home of a friend whose father works for the Revolutionary Guards. Meanwhile, Parviz, the son attending college in New York, battles his own intense isolation in the city, waiting for money from home that never arrives. In coded phone calls, Parviz understands that his father is in jeopardy, the future uncertain. Each family member endures this painful isolation, existing in a sort of stasis, unsure how to resolve their dilemma, escaping the frightening circumstances of their days by remembering softer, kinder times, the Septembers of Shiraz.

The very fabric of their lives destroyed by the revolution, Isaac is inextricably tied to the shah's regime; there is literally no future for this family save escape. It is that painful truth that so defines the daily activities of each: Isaac's delivery into the hands of his torturers, desperate to avoid the fate of his fellow prisoners; Farnaz' gradual acceptance of a future without the luxuries she has long taken for granted, vaguely threatened but unable to take action; Shirin's theft of the dossiers that may bring swift and brutal repercussions to her doorstep; the once-loyal house servant who makes increasingly critical judgments of her employers and may be a spy; and Parviz' longing for family connections far from those he loves. Balancing the brutality of revolution with one family's fragile hopes, Sofer illustrates the chaos and fear of a world turned upside down, the Amin's driven to seek safety far from home. Luan Gaines/2007.

I purchased this book after seeing positive reviews in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. This is one of the best books I've read, with tight yet lyrical language that enabled me, someone who's never been to Iran or been in a situation akin to that the Amin family faced, to enter their world and understand their changing feelings and actions. The characters were powerfully drawn, and the reader feels empathy for the dilemmas faced by Isaac, the imprisoned father, Farnaz, his somewhat estranged wife, Shirin, the daughter, and Parviz, the son so far away. And despite the tragic events, we see growth in how the characters see themselves and relate to each other. This book richly deserves the positive reviews it has received, and I wish Ms. Sofer a long and productive career!

This is an incredibly powerful debut novel from Dalia Sofer. I had high expectations for this book after reading a very positive review by Claire Messud in the New York Times. Needless to say, "The Septembers of Shiraz" lived up to its advance praise and I highly recommend it.

The story centers on a Iranian Jewish family living in post-revolutionary Iran (1981). Isaac, the father, is a gemologist with a successful business. His life and that of his family is turned upside down when he unexpectedly arrested by the Revolutionary Guard and taken to prison. There Amin is physically, mentally and emotionally tortured for a confession about being a traitor and his connection to the deposed regime of the former Shah.

Meanwhile, Isaac's family, Farnaz (wife), Shirin (9 year old daughter) and Parviz (college student living in Brookly) struggle to cope with the imprisonment of Isaac. Sofer wonderfully captures the hopes, fears and challenges each of them face through their distinctively different perspectives and situations. Sofer does a wonderful job going far beyond the expected stereotypes to paint the complex nature of human relationships -- how these relationships exist in times of "peace" and how they exist in times of turmoil. Especially powerful is Sofer's exploration of Farnaz's relationship with their housekeeper Habibeh. Her son used to work for Amin and is now part of the Revolutionary Guard.

"Septembers of Shiraz" causes us to reflect on several sweeping themes -- how complicitous is an individual who benefits from a situation without directly supporting that underlying situation? Is it possible for power not to corrupt those when they go from ruled to ruler? What is one's connection to country vs. religion?

Sofer's writing is truly captivating. She writes with a simplicity and sense of confidence that is quite unique for a first time novelist. While she creates well rounded portraits of her characters, she really excels when dealing with the inter-relationships of those characters. Also, with very few exceptions, she does not cross over into the predictable.

Overall, this is one of the most compelling and satisfying books that I have read this year. I certainly hope that more people discover this book and get to enjoy a promising new literary voice.

This new novel has a tone of rare refinement throughout. The characters speak carefully, the descriptions are painterly, and the story is poignant. When so many new novels are snarky, hard boiled and vulgar, it is a relief to read a book obviously written by a refined person and very talented novelist. Dalia Sofer gave me insight into the life Iranian Jews must have led before they turned up overnight in my community in the early 1980s. In this beautifully rendered novel, feelings spring from the page: the work-obsessed husband falsely imprisoned, the vain but loving wife, the bewildered and innocent 9 year old daughter, and the 18 year old son, an architecture student cast adrift in Hasidic Brooklyn of all places. The scenes in Brooklyn are well rendered and the Hasidim accurately pictured. I can only assume that the Iranian scenes are equally true to life. There were certain scenes that did not ring true, though. How is it possible on a teeming Hasidic street, where small children watch from front porches and elderly women peer through windows, that a young couple could feel free enough to walk together before they were engaged? Unrealistic! And a pivotal plot device turns on a Hasidic emissary having a forbidden romance while abroad. Again, unrealistic for the very reason that Lubavitch emissaries are always married couples, never single men. [I stand corrected on this point - see comment] An absorbing story, and an inspiring one.

I tore through The Septembers of Shiraz in two days. It is gripping, moving, and perceptive. Although firmly based in the details and culture of Iran, the story is universal in showing how an apolitical but privileged family gets caught in the gears of a horrific totalitarian regime.

A lot of books about political repression focus on a person who has been imprisoned and tortured. Sofer writes about such a prisoner, but she gives equal attention to the wife, son and daughter of the man who has been imprisoned -- showing how they too suffer and cope.

I really recommend this.

I

The author, being an Iranian of the generation that was too young to clearly remember the revolution, has wisely chosen to write a fictionalized memoir.

Isaac Amin, a gem dealer in Tehran, who has pulled himself up from a very modest slums of Khoramshahr, a southern oil district of Iran, to the wealthy upper class Tehran's society, is arrested shortly after the Revolution. His son, who is studying in New York, his wife, a vocalist, and his young daughter, are devastated and overwhelmed by the sudden changes for which they were unprepared.

Even though the story is related in the third person, I still have the impression that Shirin, then nine years old, is telling us a true story long after she and her family landed safely in the United States. I think the author in her interviews reinforced this impression, though I'm not sure that she intended to.

There are three distinct settings in the novel: jail, where Amin is, the family home in Tehran, where Farnaz and Shirin (Amin's wife and daughter) are living, and New York City, where Parviz (Amin and Farnaz's older son) studies. The most vivid description of these lives is the Amin's jail experience, which stands out among them. Next to his life in jail comes Parviz's life in New York, which we learn more about. Farnaz and her daughter are notably ignored until the last chapter of the book, in which we feel their presence when they are given the best seats in the front of the truck over the boarder to Turkey. Amin had made sure to pay extra for their safety and comfort.

The book's blurb says, "The September of Shiraz simmers with questions of identity, alienation, and love, not just for a spouse or a child (the father is the protagonist of the story) but for the unnameable, uncountable sights and sounds of the places we call home." If this novel is about love and identity, it was totally lost to me. While it has just a casual acquaintance with love, it has much more to say about the pain, though of a particular kind. It is about the abuse of human rights, arrest, confiscation, torture, bribing, smuggling, corruption, and lawlessness. It is the recording of pain in the solitude of jail, where colorlessness and hopelessness cast a deeper shadow on pain and turn it into a horror. Those of us who have had dear ones in and out of Evin Prison know very well how daring it is to learn about the pain and suffering there. As far as I know, those who have experience it don't voluntarily sharing it either. Dalia Sofer, with amazing courage, dares to look into this abyss and freezes everything into words; delightfully, she does it without rage or anger.

The book was a tribute to the pain and suffering of those whose suffering was not in retribution for their wrongdoings, but merely to their slipping into the wrong side of life by sheer chance. It is a heartbreaking tale of a man who happens to fall out of favor when society goes through changes. Amin's suffering in jail is the most elaborate and the most vivid part of the book. It is the life in those smelly, blood-smeared, insect-infested, moldy cells, smeared with blood cells which works on our heart, rather than those outside of the cell, except for those breath-taking pages when Shirin is steals some files and again when she buries them in the garden.

In contrasted to Amin's experiences in his enforced solitude, which comes to us so sharply and vividly, Farnaz's experience is passed over. Even her identity remains obscure to the reader. There is not even one incident in the book in which a friend visits her or any occasion for her to visit anyone. There are no Sabbath dinners with friends or relatives, no friends calling, no one dropping by; she is all alone while Amin is in jail.

Though the book is about suffering, there is none of the Farnaz's pain depicted in it. Given the impression I have regarding the story's point of view, I'm puzzled by the absence of Farnaz and the indifferences of the author to her.

New York City gives life a better chance to display itself. We know more about Parviz than Farnaz and Shirin. Since the book was published in the United States, we need something for the local reader to connect to. But that aside, a parallel runs through the story, if not a connection. Briefly, Parviz, adopted by a Hasidic family, discovers how unyielding is the space between connection and interruption. One false move, one misspoken word, and you find yourself on the wrong side of things.

It is this thin wall which is the most frightening aspect of our modern life, this unreliability and unpredictability, this living by chance, by a flip of the coin, this unexpected "all of a sudden" which turns Isaac Amin's life upside down and sends Parviz to the wrong side the wall. The only difference is that by pure luck, Parviz is better suited on the wrong side, but Isaac is not.

Clair Messud, in her very favorable review, holds out the hope that this book will become "a classic," alongside The Great Gatsby. But, there is a long way to go for the September of Shiraz to become a classic, for a novel in which two of its four characters do not find a chance to appear fully or even to develop at all and whose subplots have no connection to the main plot except through the blood relation. Why are we are in such a rush? The author is too young and has just started, it is her first novel. Let's do not go that far. It takes a bit more than one review in The New York Times to make any book a classic.

Yes, Sofir's story is very good for a novice writer. A work in the progress, I would call it. Let the story to be read and judged by its readers, and not friendly critic, and let's see if it withstands its readers' demands. Let's see if it answers reader's questions. Then, in due time, it will become a classic disregarding the capricious market.

I can't believe this is Sofer's first book. Normally, I'm not inclined to buy debut novels - regardless of how good the reviews are. Also, I'm even less likely, generally, to buy hardcover books. I've got plenty of work-related stuff to lug around daily, so paperbacks are simply easier on my back. This book, however, was an exception. Indeed, it is exceptional.

I started reading chapter 1 in the bookstore, thinking I'll skim a few lines before heading over to the "new in paperback" table. But I was hooked. It didn't grab me aggressively like a mystery or action novel. I can't explain it, really. It just made me want to sit down right there in the store and keep reading.

Indeed, the subject is compelling and the book does begin with a dramatic event. But Sofer's prose is so eloquent - it makes you want to keep reading simply for the joy of reading, as well as to find out what happens.

As for my dilemma - whether to buy or not to buy? Well, there were no comfortable places to sit in the bookstore, so I took the plunge and bought it. I deliberately read it slowly to maximize the pleasure from my investment. Even so, I'll probably re-read it this weekend.

I have rarely read a debut novel as polished and moving as this one. Each of the characters -- from main characters to secondary ones -- is a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person who rings true.

The plot, taking place in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, focuses on the Amin family: Isaac, a rare-gem dealer who is forced to navigate the terrors of an indifferent and cruel prison system, his wife Farniz, who must find courage as the world she lives in turns upside down, Shirin, a heart-breaking nine year old girl who struggles to find meaning, and Parvis, the ex-patriot son who lives in the Hassidic Brooklyn neighborhood.

The book has a lot to say about everything that's important: the meaning of love and family, the divisions that religion can cause, the upheavals of misguided revolutions, class struggles, the symbolism of "home", the tenacity needed to move forward, and mostly, what it means to be human in an often inhuman world. And it says it with compassion and understanding.

Along the way, the novel deals movingly with questions of identity, love, home, and really matters in life. Like the gems that Isaac lovingly crafts, some break easily, others shine brightly, and still others stand the test of time.

This first novel is absolutely beautiful. Ms. Sofer writes with such feeling that you are carried away by the characters and you feel as if you are with them in their pain and joy. This book was literally mesmerizing. She tells her story in such a poignant and touching way. I look forward to her future works.