ok, this was a bit strange: reading an originally dutch book translated into english by an iranian writer, Kader Abdolah (aka Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani): my father's notebook. i was looking in the library and came across it. i always try to read books in their original language, but all the dutch copies were out. it was a quick read: on holiday at last and i had lots of time to power-read through 3 books...to be honest, i wasn’t too inspired by it, due partly to the writing style, and partly possibly due to translation problems or the nature of the original language (as i've mentioned earlier, dutch is a short, sharp and concise language and the sentences in the book were also to the point, and sometimes a bit stilted i thought). the book tells the story of a father and son in iran through two perspectives, the son himself, and an omniscient narrator who lives in the netherlands. i kept associating the two and maybe they were one and the same after all, i'm not sure. I even started thinking the book was semi autobiographical, as the author also studied at the university of Teheran like the son, was involved in left-wing politics, and fled from iran to the Netherlands in 1985.
the story tells the story of the life of the father, a deaf mute, and the life of the son (of course interwoven with the father's life), with the tumultuous history of iran unfolding in the background (the shah’s, the left communist movement, the ayatollah). these were interesting parts for me, as i didn't really know much about the recent history of iran and always like books that tell the story of a country or time period as well as about its characters. the writing style bugged me sometimes: the author added seeming unnecessary sentences and dialogue in parts of the book; other sections seemed to jump back and forth like the ramblings of the authors mind, without helping the reader to understand why these associations came to mind. the end was quite abrupt, with one of the characters disappearing never to reappear. but I guess that was what hit me the most after reading this book: the lives that even everyday people live in countries ruled by dictators. how a man grown up in a village can end up fleeing his country of birth over the mountains (for writing subversive pamphlets) and end up in the netherlands, never to see his father again…and survive to tell the tale
the story tells the story of the life of the father, a deaf mute, and the life of the son (of course interwoven with the father's life), with the tumultuous history of iran unfolding in the background (the shah’s, the left communist movement, the ayatollah). these were interesting parts for me, as i didn't really know much about the recent history of iran and always like books that tell the story of a country or time period as well as about its characters. the writing style bugged me sometimes: the author added seeming unnecessary sentences and dialogue in parts of the book; other sections seemed to jump back and forth like the ramblings of the authors mind, without helping the reader to understand why these associations came to mind. the end was quite abrupt, with one of the characters disappearing never to reappear. but I guess that was what hit me the most after reading this book: the lives that even everyday people live in countries ruled by dictators. how a man grown up in a village can end up fleeing his country of birth over the mountains (for writing subversive pamphlets) and end up in the netherlands, never to see his father again…and survive to tell the tale
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