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I am the first person to review this book in goodreads, so I am going to be very careful not spoil this book for anyone. In December last year, I brought a few books from Iran to read and every time I wanted to choose which one I should read first, I noticed that there is no synopsis or review anywhere in the left or right or inside of the book. All books had a sample of writing, a paragraph that is possibly there to introduce the style of writing. I was not used to it anymore and when I saw no short summary in the back of this book in English also, I assumed that may be this is another cultural difference, a literature related difference. For the Persian reader, it’s enough to read a sample paragraph and decide that he or she wants to read the book. In North America on the other hand, the readers, especially those who don’t know the author demand to be able to know a short summary of the book, how the story starts, the landscape, and why it is so exciting to read, so I told myself, maybe I should be the first one to write a review or synopsis about this book.
While I was reading the book, I was struggling with how I would write a review for this book. Who are the characters, what’s the story? The first few chapters seemed like scattered thoughts all over. Each chapter, as if someone published a narrator’s notes about a dream or nightmares, but why didn’t I want to put aside the book? As I read some more, I started connecting with the narrator. He is a man in his fifties, and I share with him an era, and maybe a region that he was raised. He is a musician who has lived in The Netherlands and France for a long time. He is hospitalized to have a surgery on one of his eyes, but then because of his infection, he cannot have the operation and for two weeks he is not allowed to go anywhere to make himself ready for the operation. Here is when he starts feeling like a lamb making himself ready for the kill. He thinks about his past in Iran, where he lived in the South. I couldn’t know which part, because the descriptions where so much like my home town Abadan, but he mentioned Bandar Abbass a few time, so I assumed that those childhood memories were from Bandar Abbass, although I didn’t know that Bandar Abbass was like a colony of the British, the way Abadan used to be prior to nationalization of oil industry. The influence of music, especially Jomeh’s character absorbed me more and more. The culture of his past life was parallel with his contemporary life in Europe where he feels racism. He is haunted by the traditions that even in France don’t let him be freely with a woman he loves, a woman many years younger than him. Each chapter poetically glances the past and present. So, I was drowned to the story of this musician who chose to make forty sitars and sell them all for living. His goal was making a perfect sitar, and somehow he thought his fortieth sitar, the last one, will be the perfect one. But was that true and will he reach his goal? I leave this to you to find out as many other things in this book of memories of Iran in 1950s and 1960s. I learned a good deal about the character of his first love, Parvin, as well as his “M� lover and I wish that the narrator revealed more about his “S� lover too. I loved how freely Ghassemi wrote this story and avoided self- censorship, which we, all writers from other cultures tend to do. The book is very ambiguous and I know this is what we, Iranian love, ambiguity in art. I may be wrong in understanding so many parts of it and will look forward to reading other reviews and discussions to see how this ambiguous story will be taken by other readers. Enjoy!