New Releases by Dalia Sofer

One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. "Finely wrought, a master class in the layering of time and contradiction that gives us a deeply imagined, and deeply human, soul." --Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review From the bestselling author of The Septembers of Shiraz, the story of an Iranian man reckoning with his capacity for love and evil Set in Iran and New York City, Man of My Time tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. Tucked in his pocket throughout the trip, the ashes propel him into a first-person excavation—full of mordant wit and bitter memory—of a lifetime of betrayal, and prompt him to trace his own evolution from a perceptive boy in love with marbles to a man who, on seeing his own reflection, is startled to encounter someone he no longer recognizes. As he reconnects with his brother and others living in exile, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past, with the insidious nature of violence, and with his entrenchment in a system that for decades ensnared him. Politically complex and emotionally compelling, Man of My Time explores variations of loss—of people, places, ideals, time, and self. This is a novel not only about family and memory but about the interdependence of captor and captive, of citizen and country, of an individual and his or her heritage. With sensitivity and strength, Dalia Sofer conjures the interior lives of the “generation that had borne and inflicted what could not be undone.”

Story of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran shortly after the Iranian revolution.

Na de Islamitische Revolutie in Iran wordt een joodse zakenman opgepakt, hetgeen grote gevolgen heeft voor diens vrouw en kinderen, van wie er een in het buitenland studeert.

Un jour de septembre 1981, le joaillier Isaac Amin est arrêté à Téhéran par deux gardiens de la Révolution et jeté en prison. Son forfait : être juif, fortuné, et entretenir de vagues relations avec le régime du shah. Isaac est terrassé par la peur, la terreur de l'inconnu et l'idée qu'il ne reverra peut-être jamais sa femme ni ses enfants. Quant à ceux-ci, ils sont dans l'ignorance absolue de ce qui lui est arrivé.

In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known. As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer. And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger. A page-turning literary debut, The Septembers of Shiraz simmers with questions of identity, alienation, and love, not simply for a spouse or a child, but for all the intangible sights and smells of the place we call home.

Na de Islamitische Revolutie in Iran wordt een joodse zakenman opgepakt, hetgeen grote gevolgen heeft voor diens vrouw en kinderen, van wie er een in het buitenland studeert.

En esta obra la autora describe la humillante historia por la que han de pasar los que salen perdiendo de una revolución, en este caso la Revolución Islámica de Irán. Sofer describe el proceso de una de esas familias antaño poderosas y hogaño arrebatadas de todo, incluso de la vida. Las torturas en la cárceles, la huída por la frontera con Turquía, los registros, el temor continuo y la violencia extrema contra los que no cumplían los preceptos religiosos surgen en este libro. El estilo es descriptivo, sin detenerse especialmente en los momentos más desagradables, y transmite una visión bastante ajustada de lo que pudo significar la revolución fundamentalista. La novela es una interesante aproximación a la situación real de Irán en aquellos años.