The House of the Mosque

Description

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 foresee what will happen in the days and months to come. The household is set to experience great love and loss as it opens its doors to faith and politics. In this uplifting bestseller, Kader Abdolah charts the triumphs and tragedies of a family on the brink of revolution.

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. In 2008 Kader Abdolah was honoured with the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

* Beautifully written and fiercely readable Daily Mail * Abdolah's is a powerful voice The Times Satruday 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