In the Walled Gardens: A Novel - Softcover

Firouz, Anahita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316169013 ISBN 13: 9780316169011

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2003

Synopsis

Set in a world on the brink of destruction--Iran before the revolution--this haunting and passionate novel tells the story of a doomed love affair. Mahastee grew up in the privileged inner circles of Tehran's aristocracy. Reza, whose father once worked for Mahastee's family, has become a revolutionary leading clandestine meetings in the city's shadowy underworld. When they come together for the first time in 20 years, their volatile love assumes new and threatening implications as the political situation in Tehran becomes increasingly explosive. A novel that richly evokes a complex, exotic, and alluring culture largely unknown to readers in the West. Anahita Firouz belongs to the last generation in Iran who witnessed an entire way of life fall apart.
- A love story sure to spark discussion in reading groups.

About this title

About the Author:

Anahita Firouz was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran. She now lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two children. This is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

The underlying corruption of prosperous prerevolutionary Tehran provides the backdrop for this stilted first novel, alternately narrated by Mahastee, a wealthy, unhappily married woman whose husband is one of the business elite, and Reza, a Marxist underground revolutionary who is the son of the groundskeeper at Mahastee's father's estate. As children, Mahastee and Reza harbored a forbidden love for each other. Now in their 30s, they are thrown together in their attempt to free an acquaintance imprisoned unfairly by the Shah's secret police. Despite their common cause, their differing loyalties Reza's to Marxism, as embodied by Jalal, an uncompromising revolutionary, and Mahastee's to some more nebulous idea of justice and personal freedom pull them apart. A wandering narrative leaches some of the drama from the plot, as do the characters' desultory musings. The narrative voices of Reza and Mahastee are virtually identical despite their differences of gender, class and politics, and both report on the life around them with much description, but little sentiment. Because they do not seem emotionally engaged with their complex situations, the reader does not engage with their stories, despite the urgency of the characters' plights. The parties, gossip, affairs and drinking of the Tehran "B+" list are well drawn, as are the relationships of masters with servants, but the story is hollow at its core.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0316169013
• ISBN 13: 9780316169011
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368