My Father's Notebook
Published on 4. November 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-78689-898-2 (ISBN)
Description
When he was a boy, Aga Akbar, the illegitimate, deaf son of a Persian nobleman, travelled with his uncle to a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain. Once there, he was to transcribe a cuneiform inscription over three thousand years old. Decades later, his son, Ishmael - a political dissident in exile - attempts to translate a notebook filled with a private language made from this ancient script . . . and in the process tells his father's story, his own, and the story of twentieth-century Iran.
My Father's Notebook is at once a masterful chronicle of a culture's troubled voyage into modernity and the heart-rending, timeless tale of a son's enduring love.
My Father's Notebook is at once a masterful chronicle of a culture's troubled voyage into modernity and the heart-rending, timeless tale of a son's enduring love.
Reviews / Votes
This poignant, affectionate and beautifully told tale reflects a longing for a lost homeland * * Guardian * * Beautifully evoked in often touching and amusing detail . . . My Father's Notebook is an intriguing, complex and often playful novel that deserves attention * * Scotland on Sunday * * My Father's Notebook, a lovely novel, has the cadence of a fairy tale and the clarity of truth * * Wall Street Journal * * A storyteller of utmost subtlety and natural ease * * Times Literary Supplement * * With seamlessly interwoven quotations from Persian and Dutch literature, deft storytelling and affectionate humour, he offers the reader buoyancy as well as weight. My Father's Notebook is a gift to English readers * * Independent * * [A] powerful meditation . . . A moving elegy for a lost father and homeland, but also a voice raised against all forms of repression . . . My Father's Notebook reads like a detective story * * Guardian * * Kader Abdolah weaves Sufi myths, political intrigue and biography into a charming meditation on the relationship between father and son . . . a moving account of one man's life that serves as a fascinating reflection on conflicts between religion and politics, homeland and exile, the past and the present * * The Skinny * *More details
Series
Edition
Main - Canons
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Canongate Books
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
230 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78689-898-2 (9781786898982)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Kader Abdolah (a pen name created in memoriam to friends who died under the persecution of the current Iranian regime) was born in Iran in 1954. While a student of physics in Tehran, he joined a secret leftist party that fought against the dictatorship of the shah and the subsequent dictatorship of the ayatollahs. Abdolah wrote for an illegal journal and clandestinely published two books in Iran. In 1988, at the invitation of the United Nations, he arrived in the Netherlands as a political refugee. He now writes in Dutch and is the author of novels, short stories and works of non-fiction.
Susan Massotty is a translator of Dutch into English. She has translated works by Kader Abdolah and Margriet de Moor, as well as Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. She won the Vondel Prize for My Father's Notebook.
Susan Massotty is a translator of Dutch into English. She has translated works by Kader Abdolah and Margriet de Moor, as well as Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. She won the Vondel Prize for My Father's Notebook.