My Father's Notebook

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 show more 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). show less

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.

The main character in this book is a deafmute man, Aga Akbar, living in a small village in the mountains of Iran. He can't write, but he teaches himself to write in a fashion only he can read. His son goes to university and gets involved in resistance against the shah. When at the revolution it turns out that the mullahs are even worse than the shah, he has to flee. Akbar doesn't seem to be fully aware of the politics going on, but despite the love of the son for his father, Akbar gradually gets involved. He loves his son, what his son does must be ok. Also,the deafmute may be deaf and mute, but he's not stupid.

The book is intriguing, catching, emotional. Abdolah went through a similar phase in his life, so i can't imagine that much of show more the book is autobiographic. Abdolah's father was a deafmute.

I find it remarkable that a person who has started to learn Dutch only years ago, is capable not only to speak and write the language fluently, but also to write good novels. show less

Tra passato e presente, tra Persia e Olanda, riconciliarsi col passato per poter vivere più pienamente il presente. Ismail, rifugiato politico iraniano, fuggito dalla presa del potere degli ayathollah, che hanno precipitato l'Iran dalla dittatura alla fanatica teocrazia, cerca di adattarsi al suo nuovo paese ricostruendo la figura paterna e i suoi appunti scritti in una inventata scrittura cuneiforme.
Bellissimo.

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.

I have been to a reading given by this writer and loved it. So when someone suggested we read this book for our bookclub I was immediately for it. And I wanted to like it, but I didn't.... I don't know why I didn't like it, maybe it was just the wrong book at that time, but I just couldn't get into it. All the other people in my bookgroup liked it a lot, so it must be me ;-))

My best book this year. Beautiful story, gently written in haunting prose. A novel to increase understanding of one way of life in the middle east.