Sahar DelijaniRezensionen
Autor von Kinder des Jacarandabaums: Roman
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The novel was well written and I enjoyed the characters. This book follows a group of children, parents and love relationships, some related by blood and others who united to help one another. The setting is in post-revolutionary Iran through 1983 to 2011. It’s a heartfelt book with generations of men and women inspired by poetry, love, belief in perfection as their goal, chasing dreams of justice and yearning for freedom.
The authenticity of the story was written with realism, fiction, and history. The result of this book brings out a striking portrait of Iranian life that is personal, magical and gripping as the gorgeous Jacaranda tree itself. The author gave examples from her own parents and other family members who were actually imprisoned in the Evin Prison in the 1980’s. It’s not only a prison for criminals but also students, journalists, intellectuals, activists, and Christians. The prison was at the border of Tehran’s city with robust cold walls that could be seen from many homes. The Iranian government security will imprison any one they thought might oppose them.
The children feel their parents pain, so they are also challenged and suffering and in no way happy or normal, however their love for their Country remains strong.
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riofriotex | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 28, 2018 |
riofriotex | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 28, 2018 | Sahar Delijani, nacida en la prisión de Evin, Teherán, en 1983, es uno de aquellos niños que correteaban a la sombra del árbol violeta. Los recuerdos de sus primeros trece años de vida, criada por diversas personas en un estado de excepción permanente, hasta que su familia pudo por fin emigrar a Estados Unidos, son la base de esta conmovedora novela.
A través del tortuoso camino que se ven obligados a recorrer sus personajes principales, Neda, Omid y Sheida, desde su niñez hasta su juventud, Delijani da voz a una generación que, por primera vez, habla sin tapujos de la experiencia vivida por sus padres y asume el desafío de mantener viva la contestación con la esperanza de que nadie tenga que sufrir la tragedia que ellos conocieron.
Azar is in labor and about to give birth. She is also a political prisoner in Evin Prison in Tehran in 1983, as is her husband, of whom she has had no news for months. Although it is clear that Azar has been tortured and abused in prison, she cannot focus on anything but the imperative of her body as she strains to bring her baby into the world, not even on the relentless questioning she is forced to endure before she is taken to delivery in hopes that the combination of natural physical pain and ruthless disregard for her situation will cause her to break. Baby Neda is born into the prison, a small ray of light in the cell where Azar and many fellow female dissidents are being held, until the day a guard takes the baby away to live with her grandparents. Azar is just one of the many political dissidents jailed in Evin Prison for their activism inspired by the failure of the promise of the Islamic Revolution and her story is just one of many here.
Ordinary people wanting the best for Iran are arrested and detained, changing not only their lives but the lives of their families. Grandparents and aunts are suddenly raising grandchildren, sacrificing plans and dreams for their loved ones. Wives are widowed with no warning, left with fatherless children. Unexplained executions shatter the lives of the citizenry as religious conservatives offer no quarter to those who do not believe in the exact same Allah that they do. There's a large cast of characters here, prisoners, their estranged families, and their children and each and every one of them suffers as a result of the Revolution. Ranging from 1983 through 2011, the novel examines the shame, the fear, the brutality, and the torture that are the lasting effects of the stringent and unyielding ruling party even for those who become part of the diaspora.
The stories come across as vignettes rather than a unified novel with an overarching and unifying plot because the connections between the characters are sometimes a bit tenuous, requiring the reader to flip back to the front of the book to consult the list of characters again in order to place them. The jumping back and forth in time, often from character to character, can be disconcerting and feels a little choppy but Delijani manages to keep the tension high over the ultimate fates of her characters, emphasizing the arbitrariness of life in Tehran, post-Revolution. The language is poetic and often times beautiful in this tale of three generations forever impacted by prison and the aftermath of dissidence. Delijani's novel, culled from her parents' experiences and her own birth in Evin prison, bears telling as a means of bearing witness to the long reaching wrongs done in the name of extremism.
The stories of several political prisoners, and their relatives outside, are told, then the narrative jumps forward to this century. Azar and Neda are in Italy, her cellmate Firoozeh and daughter Donya in the US. A death of in the family brings some of the younger generation back to visit, and see for themselves the beautiful country still under a repressive regime.
Many parts of this novel were first written and published as separate stories – the author herself is a child of the generation who were imprisoned and/or killed for their political activities – her parents went into exile, her uncle died. I found it quite challenging to work out how the people and their stories all linked up. However, I was moved by the stories, I appreciated the beauty of the writing, and was fascinated by the dilemmas faced by the next generation at the end of the novel.
Reviewed for Amazon Vine.
Delijani's prose has a lyrical quality that makes it tempting to reread the descriptions and comparisons in each chapter. She brings the sights, sounds, and smells of Iran off the page and into the reader's senses.
Intertwined stories focusing on different protagonists at different points in time don't always work well, but Delijani is successful in weaving her narratives together to compliment each other. The characters each have their own goals, dreams, fears and true losses, but they are all connected by how the Iranian revolution and its aftermath have affected them. This is a novel filled with individual and shared tragedies, yet resounding with hope underscored by the power of strong familial bonds.
Children of the Jacaranda Tree is a gateway into a culture and to conversations about issues global and universal, certain to become a book group favorite. A must-read for anyone who enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns.
The story picks up four years later with Omid, a toddler who is found sucking his fingers in the wreckage of his parents' apartment. They have been arrested, and Leila, his aunt, is now raising him along with his cousins, whose parents were also arrested. Leila's life is on hold indefinitely as she becomes mother to her sisters' children, and a perpetual unmarried child to her own parents.
Turn the page and we return to 1983 and Evin Prison, but this time to the story of Amir, a cellmate of one of Leila's brother-in-law's, and his desperate desire to leave something of himself for his daughter, born during his imprisonment. But what? He has nothing; nothing except the pits from the dates they are occasionally given to eat.
The second half of the book is set in the years between 2008 and 2011. Forough, one of Omid's cousins, has just returned to Iran to visit her grandmother Maman Zinat, Leila's mother, after twelve years away. She struggles to find her place in a home that is no longer hers and in a family that was once the only family she knew. Sheida, daughter of Amir, learns through the internet a secret that her mother has kept from her her whole life. In order to learn the truth, she too, returns to Iran and the past her mother tried to keep from her. Donya is visiting Iran in order to find out whether there is anything still between her and Omid. And finally we return to Neda, who is now an adult living in Italy, but who is still caught in the politics of the revolution and those who destroyed her parents' lives.
The novel is a mosaic of people from two generations who are all touched by the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent terror perpetrated by the Revolutionary Guard. The lives of the characters intersect, move apart and reappear, while Evin Prison remains solid and forbidding in the center of it all. I enjoyed the book, but I was frustrated by the abrupt transitions from one person's story to the next. I suppose it is a testament to her writing that the author was able to get me so involved with each character that I wanted that story to continue. For a debut novel, I was impressed, and I look forward to her next work.
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/2013/11/children-of-jacaranda-tree-sahar-delj...
The writing abounds with exaggerated language. I began to feel like I was reading a cartoon, which was not at all the intended effect I'm sure. Too many sentences simply made no sense. I pick an example at random: "Omid nodded, dropping his hands, his two fingers safe and wet in his mouth." If he dropped his hands, how did his fingers stay in his mouth? Did he bite them off? Did he drop only one hand? Delijani wrote "his hands".
It's too bad, since this is a novel that should be read, and I'm fairly sure that many readers will be put off--not by the terror of the events but by the grotesque use of language.
1 brocade | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 21, 2013 |
brocade | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 21, 2013 | The novel also explores, rather exquisitely, the relationships between mothers and daughters who have been torn apart by the war, imprisonment, and survival. Two decades later, as one daughter finally, angrily, forces her way through the silence her mother has wrapped around their father/husband's death in Evin prison, she gazes at "...the tears rushing down her mother's face, at her face twisted with pain, with the jagged scars of memories. They terrify Sheida. Those tears. Those words. They crush something inside her like an empty soda can. She wanted to avenge herself. She didn't think of the tsunami breaking her mother's body open."
In this debut novel, we get a peak at Delijani's potential as an author, and it is considerable. Her use of language and her ability to communicate the emotional terrain of terror are both lovely. Her characters, however, never gain that critical third dimension, never become fully realized in the reader's lexicon of characters. Delijani inconsistently vacillates between oversimplified, emotionally flat dialogue and beautiful prose expressing gut-wrenching loss, longing, and terror.
Still, despite its shortcomings, I recommend this book. And I certainly recommend keeping an eye on this author. I predict that we will hear more from her and that her craft will develop into something in which readers can rejoice.
4 EBT1002 | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 29, 2013 |
EBT1002 | 38 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 29, 2013 | This was a Goodreads first-read.
First Paragraph:
“Azar sat on the corrugated iron floor of a van, huddled against the wall. The undulating street made the car sway from side to side, swinging her this way and that. With her free hand, she clasped on to something that felt like a railing. The other hand lay on her hard, bulging belly, which contracted and strained, making her breathing choppy, irregular. A heat wave of pain spouted from somewhere in her backbone and burst through her body. Azar gasped, seizing the chador wrapped around her, gripping so hard that her knuckles turned white. With every turn, she was thrashed against the walls. With every bump and pothole, her body was sent flying toward the ceiling, the child in her belly rigid, cringing. The blindfold over her eyes was damp with sweat.”
PLOT/ REVIEW
Children of the Jacaranda Tree is less of a plot based book and more a collection of intertwining, related stories. They all share the same general plot and are all part of the overall story, but the way the book is set up makes them seem more individual and personal, though this book is not a collection of short stories- as may have been implied.
Each chapter begins or continues a person or group of people’s stories. So every time a new chapter begins, a new story or a continued story is told. Within each chapter the POV switches constantly too, but it’s done pretty seamlessly (for the most part), so that it never becomes distracting or confusing. Throughout the book we hear the stories of Azar (who is a heavily pregnant woman being held in Evin Prison in Tehran, and is going into labour), Leila and Maman Zinat (a daughter and mother (respectively), looking after their relations’ children while they do their time in prison. Throughout the years, the children include Omid, Sara, Forugh, Dante, and many others who need help. All young children waiting for their parents to return- some of whom have never known their mother or father. The focus of the story varies depending on the chapter, but each character gets their own arc. Another chapter focuses on Amir- in Komiteh Moshtarak Detention Centre, Evin Prison in Tehran. He has been imprisoned for 45 days and is constantly blindfolded. His wife, Maryam, was pregnant when he was arrested. The story also follows from Maryam’s POV- ranging from the year Amir was taken (1983) to her current life in 2009. Another focuses on Donya- whose mother was imprisoned long ago, finally released and then emigrated with her daughter to America- where Donya’s been for the past 15 years. The final chapter (and alternate POV) is Neda’s story (or part of it), and is the story most similar to the author’s own (at least partly). Both were born in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 1983.
However, the author was raised by her mother in California. Her father was imprisoned for at least seven years after she was born. She and her husband now live in Turin, Italy- another important place in this book. In fact, the entire story takes place in either Tehran or Turin.
Azar’s story is perhaps the shortest, but also the first- so one of the most impactful. Her story sets the tone for the rest of the book. When we find her she has been prison for a few months, after she and her husband, Ismael, were arrested for being political activists- protesting against the regime in 1983. Iran has been at war with Iraq for three years, and Saddam was Iraq’s leader at the time.
Her story tells of her experience with labour, childbirth and having a baby in prison. Her child brings new hope to her and the women who share her cell. Azar has no idea what is going on outside her tiny cell, or what happened to her husband, but for now she has a little piece of both of them in her hands.
In her cell there are many other women- including Parisa (who is also pregnant and has a son waiting for her outside the prison)- Omid.
Time skips are frequent in this book, and each chapter can go either forward or backward between any year from 1983 to 2011, though usually in substantial increments. The story spans three generations of people, who are all interconnected in one way or another, sometimes in multiple ways. The chapters alternate between years and characters- with the same time period retold multiple times from different POVs. Between 1988 there is a sudden time skip to 2008, and the next generation of characters, which mostly fills in some gaps left from the previous generation’s characters, and also sets up the generation to follow.
There are a few motifs played through the book. The jacaranda tree is an obvious one, but other motifs include butterflies and pregnancy (obviously symbolic of new life while the old is taken and/or abused). Another strong theme of this book is the power of memories. That decades can pass, but the memories can still feel fresh in the mind- still have the strength to cripple you or lift you.
This book is more a story of relationships, which can make for a slow-paced book as there is little plot. It is more a story about how much a person can impact another’s life. How relationships are born through necessity or by chance, and how they last or change- regardless of whether the person is with you any longer.
In its own words, this quote from the book perfectly describes what the story consists of and is about:
“the mysterious ripples of love and pain, of breaking and blossoming, of past and future.”
There are always two sides to everything. There cannot be love without hate, or a future without a past. There are many different kinds of relationship and this book explores a lot of them. What must it be like, to be a child who is more comfortable with other women than your own mother- for her to be a stranger to you. Childrens’ relationships to one another, and how they change as they age, along with whether they grow up together or not are explored frequently in this book, along with the relationship to the women who raised them compared to those who birthed them.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND
The war and regime are more of a necessary plot point to place the characters in the needed conditions, as well as to immerse the reader in the truth of events. These characters and situations may be fictional, but they most likely happened. There were thousands of people killed or hurt during their protests of the regime- the regime that was meant to free them all from the the fallen Shah. In 1988, 4000-5000 young men and women were executed in the months of July and August. The committee interviewed all political prisoners and ordered executions of those deemed “unrepentant.” Twenty years later, and the next generation is still suffering the country’s rule, but in different ways, and the opposing side are more open- killing on the streets instead of behind the walls of a prison.
During the chaos surrounding the demonstrations and loss of the country’s leader, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to take advantage of the disruption that followed the wake of the Revolution by invading territories previously taken by Iraq during the Shah’s rule. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting the Iran-Iraq War, which the Iranian Regime used as an excuse to execute many of it’s own people. By 1982, the Iranian forces had managed to drive out the Iraqi army. In 1987, Iran tried to close the Persian Gulf- thereby stopping oil flow to Iraq, after almost seven years at war with the country. In 1988, Khomeini accepted a truce created by the UN, and the war ended. Iranian casualties were estimated to be between 500,000 and 1,000,000. Following the war, President Rafsanjani concentrated on keeping to the ideology of the regime, while trying to rebuild the country. He served until 1997, when Khatami took over. Khatami is not generally thought to have been successful in freeing his country. In 2005, presidential elections brought Ahmadinejad to power. He was again voted in 2009, winning over Mousavi- though there were conspiracy theories that provoked the 2009-2010 Iranian election protests in (not just Iran), but many major capitals in the West too.
Out of all the different stories told, I think Amir’s is my favourite. It is easily the darkest, and most chilling, but it’s also very endearing in terms of Amir himself- which is why it affected me the most. I cared for all the characters, but his story resonated most with me for being short, but effective.
All the stories are dark (as can be expected), but quite how much varies on the story. Some are simply tinted with dark memories or fears, while others are seeped in it- the inescapable fate.
This is a book that ends on a slightly hopeful note, that describes the power of memories, relationships and cleansing- revealing everything to the people that matter, that need to know, rather than keeping it inside and letting it fester- to slowly eat away at you.
A well-rounded story, filled with as much love and comfort, as it is hate, fear and hurt. With as much joy and new life, as pain and loss. It’s not necessarily a powerful story- despite it’s subject material- but it is a real one. It is based on fact and spreading the word goes a long way to helping end the issues. I wasn’t as deeply moved by the story as I thought I would be, but I did enjoy the book. It may be that the switching chapters/POVs makes it hard to not distance yourself when the book already does that. Some of the characters are mentioned in others’ stories, but then it feels distanced, rather than if we followed one or a couple people’s stories, but were with them for longer. There are so many characters in this book that, it’s not so much that it doesn’t work (as all their stories are interesting), but that the emotion is filtered too much. With so many people to care about, feeling so many different things at one time (thanks to the time skips), the characters go from extreme loss to falling in love, to the happiness of a well loved child, to rekindled relationships in a short time span. It’s a little like an emotional rollercoaster- with so many ups and downs going by so quickly that you don’t really have time to immerse yourself completely in any of them.
However, I did like this book. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I loved it, but I would read it again, and I would recommend it, so clearly there is enough to be gotten out of it (in my opinion) to take the time to read it.
Disclaimer: I received this book through a giveaway. This is not a sponsored review. All opinions are 100% my own.
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Set in Iran, this book looks at the lives of the children of prisoners. It examines the pain and grief experienced in the extreme regime between 1983 and 2011.
This book had so much potential. I felt a connection with Azar in the first chapter as the author seemed to focus on building her up. After that... After that I got a little lost. The book went downhill after the first chapter. There are just too many characters and things happening. Sure, there are some beautiful parts and the writing isn't bad, but overall I just struggled to get into the book as much for the rest. The pain of the characters is there, but I couldn't connect with them in the same way. I don't know, the other characters felt a little flat and underdeveloped. Maybe it's just because if how many there are and how quickly they're introduced though. This might have worked better as a series of short stories. They already are so close to being one, but they are all loosely connected by a fine, very tangled, thread.
I did consider giving this book three stars, but I don't think it's quite there. And looking at comments some others have made, the book dramatically underplayed the conditions in the prison (the part of the story that managed to draw me in and I connected with most as a result). While this is fiction, it disappoints me a bit and convinced me to go with a slightly lower rating (one I was already considering anyway).½