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Spijkerschrift : notities van Aga Akbar by…
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Spijkerschrift : notities van Aga Akbar (2000)

by Kader Abdolah

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5972439,332 (3.8)33
Ismail, eksiliraner i Amsterdam, fortæller om sin døvstumme fars landsbyliv i Iran, og derigennem om landets omtumlede historie i det 20. århundrede.
Member:yrusac
Title:Spijkerschrift : notities van Aga Akbar
Authors:Kader Abdolah
Info:Breda : De Geus; 379 p, 21 cm; http://opc4.kb.nl/DB=1/PPN?PPN=317251503
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My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah (2000)

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» See also 33 mentions

English (10)  Spanish (8)  Dutch (5)  Italian (1)  All languages (24)
Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
Full of poetry, tragedy, political upheaval and heartbreak, this novel has scenes that seem to be painted, rather than written. It's been such a long time since I read Persian poetry, now I long to do it again. Highly recommended. ( )
  Alexandra_book_life | Dec 15, 2023 |
Spijkerschrift, Abdolah's second novel, is more-or-less autobiographical in theme. The narrator, a refugee living in the Netherlands, examines his relationship with his father, the deaf-and-dumb carpet repairer Aga Akbar, living in a village in the north-east of Iran, against the background of 20th century Iranian history. Aga Akbar's disability is central to the way the novel develops - it gives Abdolah a way to explore the way that language defines your perception of the world, since Aga Akbar can normally communicate only in a private sign-language developed within the family and the village. His eccentric uncle, the poet Kazem Gan, has encouraged him to write his thoughts down, but since Kazem Gan can't be bothered to teach him how to write in Persian, he ends up developing his own private and personal writing system, inspired by a cuneiform inscription from the time of Cyrus the Great on the wall of a local cave. And of course he still can't read, so he remains dependent for his knowledge of the wider world on what the people around him are able to translate into sign language. Now the narrator, sitting in his attic in the Flevopolder, is trying to reconstruct what his father must have written in the notebook, without any means to decode the cuneiform other than his memory of his father's life, and of course realising how little we can know of what goes on inside someone else's head unless they have an effective way of communicating it.

Another big theme of the book is the odd way in which having a disabled parent introduces a partial role-reversal into the parent-child relationship, giving the narrator an unusually intimate relationship with his father - and an unusually heavy load of the usual filial guilt when he becomes involved in the underground resistance to the Shah, and later to the clerics, and is forced to separate himself from his parents to avoid implicating them in his political activities.

The book ticks most of the boxes you would expect from the "refugee novel" genre - there is more local colour than you can shake a stick at, there are attractive descriptions of the idyllic-but-tough life-before-the-political-horror, there are arrests, beatings, and disappearances, there is the wear-and-tear of being constantly on the lookout for the secret police. But what makes it special and uniquely attractive is the charming, modest, but sure-footed way Abdolah navigates between the two cultures and picks up echoes in their ways of imagining the world in poetic terms (even the idea of deciphering the notebook gets tied into the framing narrative of the Dutch classic Max Havelaar). ( )
3 vote thorold | Feb 6, 2017 |
This was a lovely, moving, very well-written story. The writing style is simple but very powerful. The sense of being right there, in Iran or in the Netherlands, is really strong. ( )
  rosiezbanks | Jul 27, 2015 |
Superb novel in superb Dutch by someone who escaped from Iran long time ago. I have a copy signed by Kader Abdolah himself. He used to live in my hometown. ( )
  M.J.Meeuwsen | Dec 11, 2010 |
I absolutely loved this book ( )
  Gabriela50 | Feb 20, 2008 |
Showing 1-5 of 10 (next | show all)
Abdolah writes in staccato sentences using a simple vocabulary, and the narration is often heavy-handed. The use of tapestry as a structuring metaphor is too familiar a convention for Abdolah to make it fresh. But he doesn't need to: the reader is skilfully wrapped up in the fabric of semi-autobiographical stories. My Father's Notebook reads like a detective story: information is withheld so that we gradually discover the background to Ishmael's exile.

Like Orhan Pamuk's Snow, the novel portrays the sense of rootlessness in the secular west and the religious oppression of Islamic countries. But unlike Pamuk's unrelentingly dark brooding, Abdolah leaves pockets of cheerfulness, such as a hilarious anecdote about Ishmael dressed up and dancing like a Parisian schoolboy, mocking the westernising shah.
 

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And so it went until the men of Kahaf finally sought refuge in the cave.
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Ismail, eksiliraner i Amsterdam, fortæller om sin døvstumme fars landsbyliv i Iran, og derigennem om landets omtumlede historie i det 20. århundrede.

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Synopsis for the Dutch edition:
"Een grote roman over liefde, verraad, dood en religie in een even sprookjesachtig als woelig Perzië. Aga Akbar, de doofstomme vader van Ismaiel, heeft in de loop van zijn leven een boek geschreven. In een zelf ontworpen spijkerschrift. Na zijn dood in de Perzische bergen wordt het boek bij zijn naar Nederland gevluchte zoon bezorgd. Ismaiel probeert het leesbaar te maken, net zoals hij zijn vader vroeger verstaanbaar moest maken. Zo tovert Kader Abdolah het leven van Aga Akbar en zijn zoon Ismaiel tevoorschijn."
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