Sfatib

Memorable story performed beautifully

Revisado: 06-03-23

The performance is very professional. Thank you so much for bringing this story to life.

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An HONEST story about modern Iran

Revisado: 06-02-20

Azar opens her novel with the powerful image of a mother's intuition about her young boy's execution: “at 2:35 pm on August 18, 1988, Sohrab was hanged with no trials and unaware that his body would be buried en masse with hundreds of other political prisoners in a long pit in the deserts south of Tehran.”

I believe "The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree" is an homage to World Literature, and a celebration of Persian Literature and mythology. Azar has employed several elements of the ancient Persian Zoroastrian culture to tell us a fascinating and tragic story. She creates an impossible but realistic world with meticulous attention to details about the beautiful nature and hardworking people of Northern Iran. This Marquezian magical realist novel has constant references to authors, poets, and also literary characters. For instance, Sohrab Sepehri, the celebrated Iranian poet, shows up in a scene of the book.

As for the content, I love her absolutely HONEST account of the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war. By picking an innocent thirteen-year-old girl, Bahar, as the narrator of her story, Shokoofeh Azar convinces her readers that she is a candid storyteller. Although she is telling us a magical story, her novel has deep roots in the bitter reality of what most Iranians have experienced in the past few decades.

"The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree" is only 245 pages, but it took me over two months to finish it, most probably because Azar's powerful and fascinating writing made me want to taste her lyrical, mystic narrative like fine wine, slowly and patiently. Moreover, since I have personally witnessed most of what is presented in the book, I had to stop reading several times. Then it would take me a few days to gather my courage to resume reading and be thrown back to those heart-wrenching and painful memories.

I am confident that several moments of this story will always stay with me, for example, chapter 6, chapter 8, and especially chapter 17. Azar's confident and powerful writing awes her readers in chapter 17 when she depicts a heartbreaking rape scene when a group of Revolutionary Guards assaults a mermaid. She masterfully highlights the layers and depth of the misogynistic culture that exists even around a mythical creature.

I highly recommend this novel to those of you who like magical realism, especially if you are interested in learning more about contemporary Iranian history through literature. I sincerely believe that Ms. Azar has done a great job of depicting a raw, uncompromising portrait of my generation's life experiences. I admire her courage for not giving in to censorship. I am proud of her for keeping these stories safe in her mind and for writing and publishing them in the free world so everyone can hear them. I read both the Persian and English copies of the novel and I think the translator has done a fantastic job of recreating the lyrical style of Azar in the English version.

**Although this novel is banned in Iran, it has been being published underground and has been a best seller since last year.

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A Love Letter to Istanbul

Revisado: 11-09-19

Dr. Elif Shafak has truly done magic in this novel. It is an absolutely honest narrative by a person who genuinely loves her city, her people, and all the women in the world anywhere they might be and however they might live. She portrays her pure love for Istanbul, The City on Seven Hills, with all her flaws and all her beauty, just as if this book is a love letter to Istanbul. In this novel, Shafak has written about the LOVE for humanity. I really enjoyed her smooth, fluent, and tangible narrative and I leaned so much about the politics and history of Turkey and the world between 1960s and 1990s. I hight recommend this novel especially those who want to learn more about the complexities of being a woman in an Islamic environment.

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