Synopsis:
"When he was a boy, Aga Akbar, the deaf-mute illegitimate son of a Persian nobleman, traveled with his uncle to a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain. Once there, he was to copy a three-thousand-year-old cuneiform inscription--an order of the first king of Persia--as a means of freeing himself from his emotional confinement. For the remainder of his life, Aga Akbar used these cuneiform characters to fill a notebook with writings only he could understand. Years later, his son, Ishmael--a political dissident in exile--is attempting to translate the notebook . . . and in the process tells his father's story, his own, and the story of twentieth-century Iran."

A book that I have double on my shelves, this version is ready to travel on again.

Reserved for my review of the Dutch (original) version.

Reserved for grovalskii, as a trade for Go Down Moses.

And off it went today, to its new reader: grovalskii. I hope it arrives soon and without a scratch.
I wish you many hours of reading pleasure!!

I have no idea (yet) what the book is like: the original version still sits on MTBR.... Will keep you posted on my thoughts about this book. Would you do the same?

Thank you for the book boekentrol, and also for the sweet note! I'll let you know what I think about the book once I'm doing reading it (which could be a while).

Yeah, well, when I said "which could be a while" I didn't realize that it would be more than 6 years before I would get around to reading this book. Sorry about that! I just finished it last night. I'm not a big fan of poetry, but the poetry contained in the book didn't decrease the value of the story for me (I skipped most of the poetry. :) ). I enjoyed the story very much and certainly learned a lot about Iran's history. At times, the story teller jumped quite a bit and it was a little hard to keep up, but overall, it was a great book.

Personal hand-over at the meet-up.
I really enjoyed this book. It taught me a lot about live in Iran under the mullahs, but it also is well written.

Book received by grovalskii at the Berlin BookCrossing Meetup – thank you! :)

Ishmael lives now in the Netherlands, and tells the story of his father Aga Akbar, his family, and his own, woven together with centuries of Iranian history, traditions, poetry and the country's most recent decades of oppression and unrest.

Together with Ishmael and Aga Akbar, there are so many other characters I found fascinating, some of whom return several times as well as some who appear just for a few paragraphs: Ishmael's mother Tina, his sister Golden Bell, and his wife Safam and Aga Akbar's mother Hajar and uncle Kazem Khan.

Thanks again grovalskii for this wonderful BookCrossing gem! It is a brilliant book which I warmly recommend!

Wishing you a wonderful read! :)

Picked up as part of the book swap game at the Newcastle Uncon. Thank you! This sounds right up my street!