“The shah comes with tanks and armies of horses and men. Keep a careful lookout for them. They will be of a frightening size, but do not scare, run to give us warning and all will be well. This is our land and the gods of it are on our side.”
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ng Kurdish boy, living in the Zagros Mountains in 1921, has always felt loved and protected, despite his family’s “poverty.” He enjoys “flying” from the roof of the family’s hut, experiencing the soaring feelings of earth and heaven at the same time, and identifying with the falcons. In gorgeous and poetic language, author Laleh Khadivi, recreates the “gloried ground” to which the boy is connected by birth and culture.
Soon after his initiation into manhood, at age seven, he accompanies the village men to a mountain lookout, where they wait for the shah’s troops. In the ensuing massacre, the boy is orphaned, and he leaves the battlefield with the shah’s army, without a backward glance, ultimately consoled by the fact that he will be getting boots, a whole new “family,” and a new way of life.
Throughout the novel Iranian author Laleh Khadivi alternates points of view among the various characters, and, in the beginning of the novel, she even personifies nature–a tree, a falcon–in passages of great lyricism. With their echoing refrains and musical repetitions, some of these sections sound like psalms, a striking contrast to the brutality, bloodshed, and horrific rapes which follow soon after.
Named Reza, for the shah, and Khourdi for his heritage, the boy conscript becomes an unthinking automaton, though he occasionally has moments in which his past overwhelms his present. Sent at fifteen to a Kurdish village, he and the army try to capture two Kurdish commanders, and they engage in terrifying brutality, Reza engaging in some of the most brutal acts of all to prove that he is one of the shah’s men, rather than a “dirty Kurd.”
As the action moves from the 1930s and into the period of 1940 through the 1970s, Khadivi shows Reza Khourdi continuing to be the perfect soldier, representing the wishes of the shah, but still suffering the inner conflicts of a brainwashed orphan. Khadivi’s portrait of this man is intimate and carefully drawn, and she creates great empathy for him in his plight, despite his actions. His assignment to Kermanshah, a Kurdish city, in 1940, and his long residence there, bring his personal conflicts to a head.
The novel is primarily a story of character, well drawn and complete, and the violence and inhumanity are integrated as part of the author’s thematic progression as “Reza” moves from an innocent childhood, through his attempts
to find “family” within the killing machine of the army, his attempts to find love, and his final assessment of his own life. Reza represents many of the conflicts we read about today–specifically, the conflicts between Iran and the Kurds and between Turkey and the Kurds–and the novel is enlightening and absorbing, but Khadivi also includes broader themes–the use of boy soldiers, the brainwashing that takes place, and the reasons these boy soldiers are sometimes more brutal than their elders. Though the novel is not easy reading for people who live safe and comfortable lives, she opens such a world to examination and analysis.
ALSO by Laleh Khadivi, THE WALKING
Notes: The photo of the author is part of a video interview with her on http://www.ratedesi.com
The map of Kurdistan, relative to Iran, is from http://zagrosphoto.com
The picture of the Shah and his queen appears on http://revmagdalen.blogspot.com
riloquist’s Tale opens and closes with addresses by a mysterious, third person ventriloquist/narrator, representing the old Amerindian culture of myth and magic of southern Guyana. This narrator indicates that he is not the hero of the book because, as he tells the reader, “Your heroes and heroines are slaves to time…. They’ve forgotten how to be playful and have no appetite for adventure.”
Despite the repellent subplot involving incest, we continue to like the characters, we are intrigued by the old beliefs that the eclipse of the sun by the moon is itself an incestuous act, and we understand how limiting it is to reduce eclipses and relationships solely to equations and to write research papers on the structural elements of myth. And we appreciate and rejoice in the brilliance of the Indians in “divining what you would like to hear and saying it, so you can never be really sure what we think….Ventriloquism at its zenith.” A fascinating and unusual novel.
This stimulating and thought-provoking murder mystery provides a unique insight into the waning days of the Nazi occupation of Prague. A vicious killer is stalking, torturing, and butchering women, and both the Gestapo and the local Prague police are searching for the killer. Both groups are also concerned with saving themselves, their country’s interests, and as many supporters as they can in the confusing days at the end of the war.
novel in ten years takes the reader on a trip through an almost psychedelic world of circus clowns, children with mystical abilities, powerful nuns, evil financiers, mysterious security agencies, and bizarre foundations. Kaspar Krone, a circus clown, has discovered that “SheAlmighty has tuned each person into a musical key,” and he is able to hear the music that SheAlmighty creates for each person. By tapping into the music of people’s psyches, he can understand their moods and thoughts. Often the music he hears from those around him is that of Bach, the ebb and flow of a person’s inner spirit paralleling the changing moods of Bach masterpieces.
As he searches for the missing children and tries to learn what they represent to their enemies, Kaspar encounters mortal dangers. He does not know whom he can trust, and neither does the reader. A large cast of characters, none of whom are fully developed, keep the mystery high but the reader’s ability to identify with Kaspar lower, and when the grand finale finally occurs, and the loose ends get tied up, the reader may feel a sense of letdown by the coincidences, something that the author himself acknowledges when he says, “When the cosmos dishes out artificial coincidences, it’s nice not to have an overdose.”
Cuba in 1992, the setting of this novel, is a “Special Period,” according to Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union, which has supported the island for years, has collapsed, and the country is starving. Gasoline is scarce, there are constant blackouts, meat and cheese have disappeared, and people have given up smoking so that they can go on eating. When they are lucky enough to find coffee, they dry and reuse the grounds four or five times. Still, there are principled young people like Dr. Manolo Rodriguez who believe in the Revolution and dedicate their lives to helping the poor. Though he has been offered a job which would pay him more money and provide him with some “perks,” he prefers to stay at the clinic he has set up for the poor in the basement of the building where he lives in a one-room attic apartment.
In crisp sentences filled with naturalistic detail, Arellano creates a dark portrait of Cuban life, emphasizing Manolo’s deep loneliness as he tries to get along in his society and make his contribution. Switching back and forth in time, from 1992 to 1989, when Mano married Elena, and 1979, when Mano’s mother died, Arellano recreates moments in time, showing the contrasts between Cuban city and country life as the various characters find their own ways of coping with the economic disasters affecting their lives, sometimes resorting to superstition and witchcraft as they seek supernatural help. Though the novel is gritty, it is no political screed. Arellano has chosen instead to provide a thoughtful look at a dark period, emphasizing the resilience of the Cuban people and their hopes for a better future.