The Age of Orphans - Hardcover

Khadivi, Laleh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408802465 ISBN 13: 9781408802465

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2009

Synopsis

Kurdistan, Persia. A village high in the Zagros mountains. A small green-eyed boy wrestles free from his mother and climbs atop a straw and mud hut to gaze at the dusty landscape; the jagged mountains and azure sky, the cattle in the distance. With his arms stretched out beside him he pretends to be a bird, to lift up and soar over this land: the land of his fathers and forefathers. Kurdish land. Soon after the boy is ritually initiated into manhood, messengers from the hills bring whispers of war; rumours that the Shah's army is moving from village to village, stamping out any tribal rebellion that may stand in the way of the creation of a unified 'Iran'. Just nine years old, the boy must stand alongside his men and fight for their land. Years later, Reza Pahlavi Khourdi can only faintly recall the brutal murder of his father and cousins. Orphaned on the bloody battlefield, conscripted into the great column of the army and given a new name, he has quickly risen up the ranks, proving both his prowess in battle and allegiance to the Shah's troops. Now in Tehran, Reza is about to marry to a beautiful, educated, city girl, and become a Capitian. But there are stirrings within his heart. He will soon move west to be the Shah's servant in Kermanshah, the land of his birth, and a figurehead of modernization. At once rich and bleak, The Age of Orphans unleashes a tapestry of untold horrors and pleasures, of blood and smoke, hopes, dreams and desires. It is a profound and darkly poetic story of a land roughly sewn together under the ambitious imagining of a nation, and of the life of a boy whose identity does not - can not - unite with this vision.

About this title

Review:

`A heart-warming and emotional read'
--Stylist

'Beautifully written ... This difficult but powerful novel introduces a writer with a strong, unflinching voice and a penetrating vision.' --Pulisher's Weekly

'The Age of Orphans is an arresting, powerful, transformative, unflinching, epic and deeply affecting novel. I cannot recommend it enough. A major voice to watch.' --Chris Abani, author of Graceland and The Virgin of Flames

'Laleh Khadivi's debut novel, remarkable for its beautiful and brutal poetry, tells the story of a lost Kurdish child and the history of "this invisible thing called Iran"... There is no moral resolution or spiritual comfort at the conclusion of the novel, the first of a trilogy. Khadivi's writing is bleakly expressive and always sensitive to the alterity and particularity, the poetry and the politics of an individual life' Alev Adil, Independent --Independent, Alev Adil

`The Age of Orphan betrays little trace of the over eagerness that can leave debut novels groaning under the weight of too many ideas ... Laleh Khadivi has allowed herself three volumes to tell her multi-generational story... Assured and endlessly creative, Khadavi's lyrical prose gets inside the damaged psychology of the orphan, bringing his terrifying loss of identity, and a broad expanse of history, to life ... This novel stands alone, but you'd be hard pressed not to look forward to part two.' --Metro, Zena Alkayat

'Khadivi's writing, for which she recently won a Whiting Award, is luminous in this tragic story of an "orphan of the earth," which is rendered in prose that
is by turns graphic and poetic.'
--Deborah Donovan, Booklist

About the Author:

Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran in 1977. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution her family fled, first to Belgium and then Puerto Rico, finally settling in Canada and the United States. She graduated from Reed College in 1998 and moved to New York where she began to direct documentary films for A&E, HBO and Showtime. She received The Whiting Writers' Award in 2008. The Age of Orphans is her first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1408802465
• ISBN 13: 9781408802465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304