An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is really an embodiment of Iranian life in constant oscillation, struggle, and play between four opposing poles: life and death; politics and religion. The sorrow residing in the depths of our joy is the product of a life between these four poles.
"If ever there was a book that needs to be read more than once, this is it" ~ ArtsHub
"This novel is an exciting development in Australian publishing." ~ ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
"Living in the 21st Century is not for the faint hearted, so it's no surprise that writers of literary fiction are looking clear-eyed at schisms of times past and the capacity of humans for brutality. Stylistically similar to Eka Kurniawan's acclaimed Beauty is a Wound, this novel is set in the aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979. Many scenes, most memorably Azar's handling of Beeta's fate, blend heavy darkness with allegorical flights of imagination, marking the author as an assured fabulist. She brings to colourful life an extended family replete with beauty, humour, and tragedy." ~ WritingWA
An extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is really an embodiment of Iranian life in constant oscillation, struggle, and play between four opposing poles: life and death; politics and religion. The sorrow residing in the depths of our joy is the product of a life between these four poles.
"If ever there was a book that needs to be read more than once, this is it" ~ ArtsHub
"This novel is an exciting development in Australian publishing." ~ ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
"Living in the 21st Century is not for the faint hearted, so it's no surprise that writers of literary fiction are looking clear-eyed at schisms of times past and the capacity of humans for brutality. Stylistically similar to Eka Kurniawan's acclaimed Beauty is a Wound, this novel is set in the aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979. Many scenes, most memorably Azar's handling of Beeta's fate, blend heavy darkness with allegorical flights of imagination, marking the author as an assured fabulist. She brings to colourful life an extended family replete with beauty, humour, and tragedy." ~ WritingWA
Reviews-
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November 25, 2019
This challenging debut by Iranian writer Azar, forced to flee to Australia in 2011, tells in dreams and fantasies the story of one family during and after the Islamic Revolution, which overtook the country in the last quarter of the 20th century. Thirteen-year-old Bahar narrates from beyond the grave, weaving a phantasmagorical tale that follows her father, Hushang, as he leads his family away from Tehran and their old ways, abandoning rugs and books and intellectual pursuits deemed dangerous by the new Islamic regime, to the small town of Razan, where he hopes to protect them. Propelled by fairy tales of jinn and the dead, the novel meanders from Bahar’s own death in a fire set by Islamic thugs to the disappearance, torture, and death of her brother, Sohrab, through the mental struggles of Bahar’s mother, who climbs greengage plum trees, and beautiful sister Beeta, who turns into a mermaid. Azar’s florid style emulates the rich storytelling tradition of bygone Persia, redolent with Zoroastrian lore and mired in magical vegetation “containing a thousand memories,” clearly meant as a bulwark against the oppression of the present day regime. But the promise of the voice is weighed down by clunky writing, rife with repeated and awkward phrasings. Azar’s dense family saga is animated by characters who face terror heroically, but it’s undercut by the unpolished prose. -
A reimagining of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath, Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree expertly traces the travails of a family of five during one of the most turbulent times in Iran’s political history. Elements of magic realism that appear in the form of portentous dragonflies, forest jinns and mermaids suffuse the narrative and dictate the fate of the characters in a way that stands in stark contrast to the material circumstances that alter their lives—the desecration of Western-influenced cultural materials, the merciless interrogations, and the mass executions of political prisoners. In Azar’s mystical world, a sense of justice that was impossible in real life is conjured through the fictionalised end of Ayatollah Khomeini, who dies alone on the verge of losing his mind in a mirrored underground palace, haunted by the dead’s tears. Footnotes that reference factual historical events and descriptions of Persian culture give the novel verisimilitude. This is Perth-based Azar’s first novel to be translated into English and will appeal to readers of historical fiction and magic realism. It recalls The Lovely Bones, which utilises the perspective of an omniscient child narrator to great effect, and Life of Pi, which adroitly obscures fact with fiction.
Sonia Nair is a Melbourne-based writer and critic
