The Age of Orphans
Laleh Khadivi, 2008
Bloomsbury USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608190423
Summary
Winner, 2008 Whiting Writers' Award
A Kurdish boy is forced to betray his people, in service of the new Iranian nation, with tragic consequences.
Reza had been like any other Kurdish boy; but after he is orphaned in a massacre by the armies of Iran’s new shah, everything changes. Later, as husband to a Tehrani woman, and as a military officer, his duties bring him face to face with his past.
Told with an evocative richness of language that recalls the work of Michael Ondaatje and Anita Desai, the story of Reza Khourdi is that of the twentieth-century Everyman who cannot help but yearn for the impossible dreams of love, land, and home. This is a universal story of the casualties of war by a stunning new voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1977
• Where—Esfahan, Iran
• Where—San Francisco area, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Reed College; M.F.A., Mills College
• Awards—Whiting Award
• Currently—teaches at Emory University, Georgia
Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977 but fled with her family to the United States in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Reed College and from Mills College with an MFA. She has worked extensively as a documentary filmmaker. She teaches at Emory University.
In 2002 she began to research the Kurds, particularly their fate in the southwestern region of Iran under the first Shah.
The Age of Orphans is the first novel in a projected trilogy that will trace three generations of a Kurdish family—based loosely on her own—as they make their way to the United States and undergo the profound transformations of the immigrant experience. (Adapted from Wikipedia and the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Unflinchingly, Khadivi limns the emotional and physical brutality of the tribal-suppression campaign and Reza’s splintering psyche in language both fierce and poetic.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Khadivi... has a lyrical style reminiscent of The English Patient author Michael Ondaatje as she strings images of a bustling Tehran or the stillness of the Zagros Mountains... The Age of Orphans evocatively captures the desperate longing for home, family and a life erased. It's an affecting tale.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Ironic, beautifully written, brutal and ugly, Khadivi's ambitious debut novel follows a Kurdish boy who is tragically and violently conscripted into the shah's army after his own people are slaughtered in battle. Assigned the name Reza Pejman Khourdi-Reza after the first shah of Iran, Pejman meaning heartbroken and Khourdi to denote he's an ethnic Kurd-the boy suppresses all things Kurdish within him, fueled by a sense of self-preservation and self-loathing. Channeling fear and hate into brutal acts against the Kurds, Reza makes a quick climb up the military career ladder, eventually gaining an appointment to Kermanshah, a Kurdish region in the north of Iran. There, as overseer of his own people, Reza promotes Kurdish assimilation and the budding nation of Iran while mercilessly silencing voices of Kurdish independence. As he grows old with his Iranian wife, Meena, Reza's internal conflicts simmer, then boil over, with unexpected and terrible results. This difficult but powerful novel, the first of a trilogy, introduces a writer with a strong, unflinching voice and a penetrating vision.
Publishers Weekly
The 2008 recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, Khadivi offers a remarkable first novel that does not shy away from harsh subject matter. This first installment in a trilogy about three generations of Kurdish men is set in Persia in the 1920s as Reza Shah Pahlari comes to power. The story tracks the life of a Kurdish boy who loses his family in a massacre and then is taken in by the very soldiers responsible for making him an orphan. Reborn as Reza Khourdi in honor of the shah, the youth is so well indoctrinated by the shah's military that his superior officers decide to reward his performance as a soldier by giving him a command post in his homeland. Reza returns to the region with his new wife to fight his own people, Kurdish rebels, and continue their brutal subjugation in pursuit of the shah's vision of a modernized Iran. Khadivi excels at capturing Reza's spiritual torture as he subdues his personal tribal history, often at the violent expense of others. With her eloquent portrayal of Reza, Khadivi has created an epitomic character representing so many 20th-century and current cultural, ethnic, and national identity clashes. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
In 1921 Persia, after a battlefield massacre, a Kurdish orphan is conscripted into the shah's army and given a new identity. Khadivi's debut spans almost six decades, during which the boy, renamed Reza Khourdi by the authorities, first proves his loyalty and his brutality and then-on the ground that his knowledge of Kurdish deviousness will be invaluable-is promoted to captain and sent to his hometown, Kermanshah. Reza's task is to be ruthless in stamping out revolts. The homecoming reignites old emotions, reminds Reza of the innocent falcon-loving mama's boy he once was but can never be again—and threatens to crack his facade and cost him the authority that is his dearest, almost his only, possession. Before his return, Reza marries a Tehrani woman, Meena. Their tragic, loveless marriage yields six children, until Reza-his wife is eight months pregnant with their seventh child-one day poisons her tea. When her brothers come up from the capital and confront him with the overwhelming evidence of his crime—Meena's blood contains cyanide, arsenic and bleach—Reza, in the book's most chilling scene, makes a ceremony of surrendering and has himself locked up by his adjutant, the jailer in the town's one cell, which has never before been used. The magistrate, another underling, takes down the brothers' evidence, laughing all the while. The next morning, Reza has himself released. The historical material has unmistakable power, but the book is somewhat marred by a false and overlush lyricism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Age of Orphans:
1. Most readers point to the graphic nature of sex and violence in Khadivi's book. How difficult a read was this for you? Do you feel the brutality adds or detracts to the story? Is it too graphic and sensational? Or is the book's violence necessary to carry the story—and to depict conditions under the Shah's reign?
2. When captured, Reza becomes part of a group of boy soldiers in the Shah's army. What creates the initial bond among the boys? What happens when the Shah pays a visit to their ranks—how does his visit affect the group cohesiveness?
3. How does Reza's capture and mistreatment as a 7-year-old boy explain his later violence toward the Kurds? What are psychological underpinnings that lead to his actions in Kermanshah.
4. The story is told through shifting points of view. Why might the author have chosen to use this narrative technique rather than a single, straightforward narrator? Does the technique work for you?
5. Talk about Reza's marriage to Meena and the couple's relationship to one another.
6. Describe Reza's inner conflict, the increasing difficulty he experiences in denying his heritage.
7. An overarching theme of this book is the destruction of identity and its consequences. What happens when individuals or groups are denied the right to express their ethnic, cultural, or religious backgrounds? Can identities ever be completely wiped out? Can a person recreate a valid identity absent any historical ties to group/family/culture? What constitutes one's identity?
8. Tangential to Questions #7: how important is it for ethnic populations to be assimilated into a larger national culture? Why do national leaders of many (most?) countries prize "ethnic purity"? What is gained....or lost....through assimilation —by the group that assimilates and by the dominant culture?
9. Point to some passages in this work that you find especially lyrical. How are such passages are juxtaposed with the violent sections in the book? Why might Khadivi have used such stylized, poetic writing?
10. This book has particular relevance today, given the use of children as soldiers in conflicts around the world. Have you read other books on the same subject, such as Dave Eggers' What is the What ... or Ismael Beah's A Long Way Gone? If so, how do the books compare with one another? Consider doing some research on the issue of boy soldiers—the prevalence of their conscription and what, if any, efforts exist to prevent their exploitation.
11. The Age of Orphans is part of a planned trilogy. Does this book make you want to read the other books when they're published?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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