The Septembers of Shiraz
Dalia Sofer,
Picador 14.99 pounds
When isaac amin sees two men with rifles walk into his office at half past noon on a warm autumn day in Tehran, his first thought is that he won’t be able to join his wife and daughter for lunch, as promised.” Instead, he finds himself incarcerated as a Zionist spy, without a trial, for an entire year. Set in September 1981 — two years after the Shah is overthrown — Dalia Sofer’s incredibly poised debut is set to take its place as a literary great in 2008.

First, it has that one distinguishing feature that sets all great novels apart. A fabulous first line that has you hooked. Not cerebrally, but emotionally. You feel a physical pull when the Revolutionary Guards take Isaac away without a word. Your mind races ahead to imagine the pain of his separation. From the word go, The Septembers of Shiraz owns your heart.

Then there is the absolute simplicity of storytelling. Told in the third person, Sofer moves from Farnaz (Isaac’s wife) to Shirin (his nine-year-old daughter) and Parviz (his 18-year-old son studying in New York) with fluidity. The book that you read is about a family even though the points of view presented are quite individual. Finally, there is the language. Sofer writes like a poet allowing the beauty of her craft to shine through with simplicity.   From lines — like “Absence, Shirin thinks, is death’s cousin” — to complex paragraphs: “Even as a boy, and later as a young man, he had been driven less by principles than by his desire to erase the stains on his life — the indifference of his father, the unhappiness of his mother, the rumbling of his stomach, the heat of his city, and the fear that like his father, he would live an insignificant life.” The writer is an artist.

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