My Father's Notebook - Kader Abdolah [SKINNYFest 3]

Aga Akbar is a deaf mute, born in an isolated Iranian village. His son, an exile in Holland, escapes from the theocratic regime of Khomeini, receives his father's notebook and reconstructs his life. Kader Abdolah weaves Sufi myths, political intrigue and biography into a charming meditation on the relationship between father and son.

Abdoulah's prose is crisp and concise: he moves characters through revolutions and family dramas at a steady rate. He never descends to cliché or melodrama, and his descriptions of historical events are clear and precise. The early chapters' magic realism gradually gives way to grittier modern realism, mirroring the changes in Iranian society and the struggle of the son to integrate in the West.

The book gives an insight into the role of Islam in Iranian communities - many of the strongest passages revolving around the status of a shrine - but it is also a domestic story, recreating lost rural communities and exploring the experience of wives, daughters and the disabled.

'My Father's Notebook' is a moving account of one man's life that serves as a fascinating reflection on conflicts between religion and politics, homeland and exile, the past and the present.