Hverdagsliv, familieliv, kjærlighet, tradisjoner, religion og Khomeinis maktovetakelse i Iran. Dette er en god fortelling!

A very very very brilliant book, that helped me understand so much more about the Muslim faith, Iran and its regime. One of my favourites. ( )

"The house by the Mosk" by Kader Abdolah. Abdolah isn't done with his past, yet, this is his second party autobiographic novel. There's a lot of similarities with his previous novel, "my fathers notebook". House by the mosk describes a history of an extended family living in a house next to the mosk they "own", one brother is the imam, another brother is the merchand who is like governing the city. But the shah is expanding modern society against the will of most people, and not being aware of the role islam plays in Persia. The shah could have done a so much better job by incorporating old Persian culture in his reign, as well as parts of moderate islam.
The shah is chased, Khomeini comes, and terror starts. Unfortunately, a happy ending isn't possible because the islam radicals are still in power in Iran. The end of the novel is "kind of" happy. And very sad.

I wonder how many of these novels Abdolah will have to write before being able to write fiction, to write the novels I think he can write and will write, but he can't because his head is still full of anger, of sadness, of grief for his lost homeland.

The writing style of this novel is typical for Abdolah. The sentences are short and powerful. In some way, it reminds me of Frank Marinus Arion, but more powerful, and better, much better. I suspect that Abdolah's writing style is influenced by the fact that he learned Dutch only years ago, as an immigrant and refugee in the Netherlands. Most immigrants should be happy to be able to write a more or less ok letter in Dutch after a few years, but Abdolah writes prize winning novels, it's amazing.

I admire Abdolah, I admire his writing style, I admire his stories, and I'm looking forward to the novels he will write in the next few years, and especially to the first full novel that is not about Iran because then we'll know that finally, he'll have learned to cope with his past. I will certainly read every novel he'll write soon as it comes out. ( )