The House of the Mosque

Description

Welcome to the house of the mosque . . . Iran, 1950. Spring has arrived, and as the women prepare the festivities, Sadiq waits for a suitor to knock on the door. Her uncle Nosrat returns from Tehran with a glamorous woman, while, on the rooftop, Shahbal longs only for a television to watch the first moon landing. But not even the beloved grandmothers can fosee what will happen in the days and months to come.

Kader Abdolah (a pen name created in memoriam to friends who died under persecution by 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. Kader Abdolah now writes in Dutch and is the author of several novels, including My Father's Notebook (also published by Canongate) and two collections of short stories, as well as works of non-fiction.

* Beautifully written and fiercely readable Daily Mail * Abdolah's is a powerful voice The Times Saturday Review * Enchanting...Abdolah's juxtapositions - the spiritual and the earthly, myth and reality - give the story a powerful irony. Independent * [Kader Abdolah] tells this story straight from the heart. And it's on the heart too that it leaves an indelible mark. The Scotsman Magazine * Expertly mingles fiction and personal history to create a thought-provoking novel to please fans of Khaled Hosseini, Mohsin Hamid and Azar Nafisi. Waterstone's Books Quarterly * fabulously powerful and heart warming Good Book Guide * an impressive book [telling] a tragic story illustrating the power of the human spirit to conquer. The Bookseller * Sensual, beguiling and elegantly translated. -- Alastair Mabbott Herald Arts * Fabulously powerful and heart-warming. Good Book Guide * Captivating and distinctive ... a measured, beguiling and potent example of literary resistance Times Literary Supplement