Septembers of Shiraz (Sofer)

Book Reviews
The Septembers of Shiraz is a remarkable debut: the richly evocative, powerfully affecting depiction of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran shortly after the revolution. In this fickle literary world, it's impossible to predict whether Sofer's novel will become a classic, but it certainly stands a chance.... Sofer writes beautifully, whether she's describing an old man's "wrinkled voice" or Shirin's irritation at wearing a head scarf, imagining "there are tiny elves inside...crumpling paper against her ears all day long." And she tells her characters' stories with deceptive simplicity. Every member of the Amin family attains a moving, and memorable, depth and reality. Although their crises—and the philosophical questions they raise—are of the greatest urgency and seriousness, The Septembers of Shiraz is miraculously light in its touch, as beautiful and delicate as a book about suffering can be.
Claire Messud - The New York Times

Like Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir about the same period in Iran, this book's strength lies partly in Sofer's ability to characterize Iranians in any epoch: the obsession with saving face, the moments of sweetness between strangers, the interplay between Muslims and Jews that can be ugly or tender.... The Septembers of Shiraz rises above being an ethnic novel about an intriguing place. It does not exoticize the Middle East or focus unduly on tempting targets such as women being forced to cover themselves or the persecution of Jews. These things exist, but they are part of a panoply of strangeness wrought upon everyone regardless of religion, gender or class. Instead, the book is about how people, in any country, live mostly without thinking about the political implications of their choices, and how they are taken by surprise when revolution or war crashes in. And how, even after the soul searching and the questions about whether they have led their lives the right way, they still care mostly about family, work, love and money. They are still, in the end, themselves.
Tara Bahrampour - The Washington Post

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.
Publishers Weekly

In Sofer's debut novel, Isaac Amin, a Jewish businessman in Tehran, is imprisoned following the Iranian Revolution. As Amin attempts to survive his brutal treatment and convince his captors that he is not a Zionist spy, his wife, young daughter, and son (a college student in New York City) find various ways to cope with the radical change in their way of life and the knowledge that they may never see Amin again. This is a story that needs to be told, as a reminder of how political and religious ideologies can destroy individuals, families, and societies. Yet the Amins are not portrayed as innocent victims but flawed human beings who closed their eyes to the injustices of the monarchy under which they benefited. The family and political issues raised in the book are timely and ripe for discussion; this should be a popular book club choice.
Christine DeZelar - Library Journal

An Iranian Jew waits wrongly accused in prison while his family slowly crumbles in Tehran and New York. In the wake of the Iranian Revolution, as the Ayatollah Khomeini's Republic is first being established, gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested near his opulent Tehran home. Technically accused of being an Israeli spy, Isaac's real crimes are his religion and his personal wealth. As his interrogators try to break him with physical abuse and neglect, Isaac is most tortured by the memories of his family, with whom he is allowed no contact. On the homefront, the situation is similarly bleak. Isaac's beloved wife Farnaz tirelessly seeks information about her husband, and in doing so, begins to question the loyalty of the family's trusted maid, Habibeh, whose son (a former employee of Isaac's) has become an ardent member of the Republic. Isaac and Farnaz's precocious young daughter, Shirin, decides to take matters into her own hands, risking the family's lives when she steals confidential files from a classmate's home in the hopes of saving her uncle from the same fate as her father. And, an ocean away, son Parviz feels the strains in different ways, when both information and money from his family suddenly stops. He takes a room and job with a welcoming Hassidic man in Brooklyn, and, against his better judgment, falls in love with the daughter, Rachel. Eventually, Isaac triumphs over his accusers by bribing his way out of prison with a gift of his life savings. But the family's troubles are hardly over, and as they try to make their way out of the country to reunite their family overseas, young Shirin's well-intentioned plan threatens to curtail all their efforts. Sofer's characters are immensely sympathetic and illustrate plainly and without pretense the global issues of class, religion and politics following the Iranian Revolution. As intelligent as it is gripping.
Kirkus Reviews