My Father’s Notebook

Description

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.

“A field guide to present day Iran… MY FATHER’S NOTEBOOK is a winning, courtly tale of Persian culture.” “Wonderful… Blends contemporary realism with Persian folklore, mirroring Iran’s… history through the eyes of a father and his son.” “MY FATHER’S NOTEBOOK, a lovely novel, has the cadence of a fairy tale and the clarity of truth .” “A storyteller of utmost subtlety and natural ease.” “Moving and illuminating . . . The history of Iran in the 20th century glints through.” “An intimate portrait… Abdolah’s prose… is clean and lyrical… A sweeping novel that chronicles the tumultuous modern history of [Iran].” “Myth and unlovely reality meet and mingle… Conveys the heartache of an exile who cannot help but feel a traitor.” “Beautiful and poetic.” “Remarkable . . . Moving, dreamlike . . . Scenes are beautifully rendered.”

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