Like a dam straining to hold back the floods, Isaac Amin, a Persian Jew, had reinforced the known weak spots so that he and his family could survive in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution; he diverted funds from his gem-dealing business to his Swiss accounts, he sent his university-age son to the US where he would be safe from the reaches of the new Iranian army. These precautions weren’t enough; one day the dam burst and Isaac was arrested by the revolutionaries on suspicion of being a Zionist spy.

Isaac Amin is one of the main characters in Dalia Sofer’s thought-provoking and powerful novel The Septembers of Shiraz. It recounts one year in the life of the family, beginning with the day Isaac is arrested in September 1981. Narrated in the third-person, the chapters are told alternately from the perspective of the Amin family members: Isaac, his wife Farnaz, their son Parviz and nine-year-old daughter Shirin. This varied perspective makes the novel more palatable than it would have been from a first-person narration; it allows the reader a bit of distance from the intense emotions that the characters must be experiencing. Perhaps it will enjoy a wider audience because of this styling.

Sofer’s prose flow smoothly, full of striking metaphors. Shortly after he learns of his father’s imprisonment, Parviz is walking across the Brooklyn Bridge: “… something about the bridge – its combination of suspension and sturdiness – comforts him. A bridge, he thinks, is the only place where uncertainty is permissible, where one can exist with no connection to any land – or any person – but with the reassurance that connection is possible.” Around the same time in the novel, Farnaz embarks on a fruitless mission to find her husband in prison; sitting and waiting for a guard to return, she hears a prisoner begging in response to questions from his interrogator, “for most people, she thinks, the notion of death is no more than a wallpaper – present but rarely seen. Prisoners, who have little to distract them, have no choice but to stare at this wallpaper.”

Sofer explores many themes in the book, including those of loss, injustice, innocence of youth, loyalty, and material wealth versus the riches of faith and family. The list is long, but Sofer layers them without crowding; I had to let the book settle within me for several days before I could discern the many subtle threads within it. The Septembers of Shiraz enriched my knowledge of the time around the revolution in Iran, and made me curious to learn more. Its complexity lends itself very well to a book group discussion.

Dalia Sofer spent her first ten years in Iran, fleeing to the United States in 1982. The work is based loosely on her family’s experience. I read the Harper Perennial paperback edition, which includes an essay by Sofer detailing some of the research she did, in addition to pulling from her own memories. This includes studying photographs and history, and interviewing former Iranian prisoners to learn about not only the physical torture, but also the range of emotions they experienced, including mental anguish and even hope.

full review at http://www.sheistoofondofbooks.com/20...
She is Too Fond of Books ( )

A moving story of a year in the life of an Iranian family in post-Shah Iran. This story weaves together the threads of one family's experiences when the father is imprisoned and tortured and the reverberations which resonate throughout three generations. The characters are so believable in all of their humanity, including their foibles, their strengths, their courage, and their fear. On a societal level there is a thread which addresses varied forms of faith, its true believers and its false ones. The human spirit is driven to survive, and it is amazing what a person can endure to do so. ( )

A travel to the past, the post-revolutionary years in Iran. Horror, betrayal,and dis-trust. Those days described in the book do not look like the pre-revolutionary years and the current Iran still extracts pretty much of the fear and horror of living those days in many families especially for families of different religion other than Islam. For the outsiders it may look that the events have being exaggerated. It's hard to believe and feel it without living it.

This was a book for one of my RL book groups. It is set in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. The main character is the head of a Jewish family. He is a jeweler and rich. They are not religious Jews, but they are also not Muslim so the new regime targets them.

The POV Isaac Amin is arrested at his office one day. They don't say why or who is behind it. So begins his journey as a prisoner of the regime. He is moved around, interrogated and accused of being an Israeli spy. He visits Israel and has relatives in the Israeli army (all young Israeli males are in their Army). But they have nothing specific to charge that he has done wrong. He is housed with other men who have been arrested. He tries to work out what is the best thing to do to stay in the good graces of the guards and interrogators. Some of the other men and teens are taken out and shot, some are tortured and returned to the cell broken and bleeding.

The other thread of the book is his wife and daughter as they try to find out what happened to him, where he is, and if they can get him out. His wife Farnaz seems to be useless, she has a maid and normally does nothing. When Isaac is taken she becomes even more depressed. The new regime had already sapped her strength, and she just watched TV and drank. She waits months to tell his parents that he has been arrested.

His daughter Shirin tries to maintain her life at school. She ends up finding files the regime is compiling on those they want to arrest. They are hidden in the basement at a friend's house. Her friend's father is part of the regime. Shirin starts stealing them. While doing so she finds one for her uncle. Her meddling disrupts the friend's father and he loses his job. There is an investigation launched to find who stole the files.

There is also a grown son, Parviz, with his own thread. They sent him to the USA to avoid the draft. They don't want him to fight in the war with Iraq. He is going to college in NYC and lives in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn. He is struggling to survive, and yet thinks getting a job would be pointless. Somehow they had looked at universities in London and Paris and were going to buy him an apartment wherever he decided to go, but he was sent to the USA with no financial support. They are rich and just drift along with no sense of urgency or planning. It makes no sense.

We follow Parviz as as he drifts along. He has a Hasidic landlord whom finally forces Parviz to work for him. Parviz also starts to fall for his daughter, but of course its not possible because Parviz is not even religious let alone Hasidic. We see the committed close-knit religious family who have goals and priorities.

While in prison Isaac reminisces about his younger life and how he spent time in Shiraz. It becomes a symbol for freedom, lightness, love and laughter, but I have no idea why. It isn't really developed that well in the book. Isaac talks about it, but it isn't real for me.

The story follows the family as they deal with Isaac's imprisonment and his eventual release. It looks at the relationships they have with other family members, friends, and the poor Muslims who work for them or in shops they frequent. It was well written and flowed, but seemed to lack something. Perhaps there is no sense of drama, and some of the characters are not real, or interesting.

I enjoyed it but thought it could have been better. Not quite bland but in that neighborhood. Many of the characters just drifted along and didn't have a focus or a goal. ( )