In the Walled Gardens - Softcover

Firouz, Anahita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0732274834 ISBN 13: 9780732274832

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd

Synopsis

Mahastee and Reza loved each other as children in Iran, and are reunited by chance as adults. Mahastee is now married to a well-established man she has come to despise, while Reza has become a revolutionary living at the edge of fear. Their encounters are a portrait of ill-fated love.

About this title

About the Author

Anahita Firouz was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up there. 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
• ISBN 10: 0732274834
• ISBN 13: 9780732274832
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English