The September of Shiraz

Dalia Sofer

"September of Shiraz was chosen by my readers' group, by my book group, by a published author who swears that it's a wonderful book, the greatest -- one of the greatest first novels that she's ever read. I wasn't so sure.

I had a great empathy for the story, which is about a Persian family living in Tehran; the father is imprisoned in 1981 in the early days of the Iranian Revolution. The son has already been sent to the United States to study, the daughter is ten, and the mother is totally shell shocked by what's happening to her family.

The father is very, very well told. His experiences in prison, you feel them. The others, the affectlessness (sic) of the prose isn't as successful. The author seems to want to give this book a happy ending; and from what she gives us of the characters, I'm not so sure that's possible. Dalia Sofer, the author, did leave when she was ten, fled with her family. How autobiographical the book is, I don't know. The book is very well written. It's very graceful prose, very spare prose; and we only see through the narrator's eyes what the character is seeing or experiencing at every given moment. It's a very disciplined style of writing. Sofer went to Sarah Lawrence, and she got an MFA in fiction, and it definitely feels like this book was workshopped a few times; but in terms of subtext, there's not much.

It's a good book club book. It's a fast read; you can read it in a couple of sittings. I'd give September of Shiraz three stars."

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