Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1236 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-07-24
• Released on: 2007-07-24
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
Sofer's family escaped from Iran in 1982 when she was 10, an experience that may explain the intense detail of this unnerving debut. On a September day in 1981, gem trader Isaac Amin is accosted by Revolutionary Guards at his Tehran office and imprisoned for no other crime than being Jewish in a country where Muslim fanaticism is growing daily. Being rich and having had slender ties to the Shah's regime magnify his peril. In anguish over what might be happening to his family, Isaac watches the brutal mutilation and executions of prisoners around him. His wife, Farnaz, struggles to keep from slipping into despair, while his young daughter, Shirin, steals files from the home of a playmate whose father is in charge of the prison that holds her father. Far away in Brooklyn, Isaac's nonreligious son, Parviz, struggles without his family's money and falls for the pious daughter of his Hasidic landlord. Nicely layered, the story shimmers with past secrets and hidden motivations. The dialogue, while stiff, allows the various characters to come through. Sofer's dramatization of just-post-revolutionary Iran captures its small tensions and larger brutalities, which play vividly upon a family that cannot, even if it wishes to, conform. (Aug.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Dalia Sofer, who was forced to flee postrevolutionary Iran at the age of ten after her own father was unjustly imprisoned, captures her family's experiences in this moving, semiautobiographical tale. Citing Sofer's evocative prose, sensitive characterizations, and suspenseful plot, reviewers called Sofer's debut novel persuasive and memorable. Though she ruminates on themes of faith, love, and the heavy toll of political and religious oppression, Sofer's honesty and balanced outlook prevent the story from lapsing into sensational melodrama or lurid allegory. Her descriptions of torture, though vivid, are not gratuitously violent. A few small complaints included some contrived dialogue and Parviz's annoying self-pity, but critics agreed that these do not detract from an otherwise "powerful, timely book" (Rocky Mountain News).

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Sofer's enlightening debut opens with the 1981 arrest of Isaac Amin, a Jewish businessman in Iran accused of being a Zionist spy. His arrest was not unexpected. Isaac has seen neighbors and family members disappear and knows the remnants of the shah's entourage—businessmen and communist rebels alike—are seen as enemies by the Revolutionary Guards. Sofer illuminates the horrific details of Isaac's months in prison and deftly captures how that experience affects the rest of his family—his wife and daughter Shirin at home and son Parviz in New York, where he has quickly fallen from son of a wealthy man to starving shop boy. In the midst of their depressing circumstances, the author nestles small jewels of hope, like the delivery of leftovers by the wife of Parviz's landlord, or the repaired shoes, picked up weeks late by Shirin, waiting patiently for Isaac's feet to fill them once again. Sofer herself emigrated from postrevolutionary Iran to New York, and her debut resonates with the empathy derived from that journey. Donovan, Deborah

Customer Reviews

Well done
The Septembers of Shiraz was well written. I enjoyed every page.
Looking forward to more books by Dalia Sofer.

Interesting and very informative
When I first started this book, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to read it. It has some pretty graphic torture. Since I was reading it for my book group, I stuck with it, and am very glad I did. It is a sensitive and very moving story. I recommend reading Persepolis with it.The Complete Persepolis

Exquisite
This story seemed too perfect to be made up. Either this writer is a prodigy, or the book autobiographical. Either way, you will not find a more incisively written, detail oriented depiction of what life was like in Iran after the Shah left.
The details of prison life were painful to read, and enabled one to vividly imagine the fate so many innocent people suffered.
The author escaped Iran when she was ten years old, the age of the daughter of the protagonist. How lucky we all are that she survived.