At the Wall of the Almighty (Emerging Voices (Paperback)) - Softcover

Moshiri, Farnoosh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566563151 ISBN 13: 9781566563154

Publisher: Interlink Books, 1990

Synopsis

A lyrical tale of memory, resistance, and survival in post-revolutionary Iran.

At the Wall of the Almighty, Farnoosh Moshiri’s haunting and lyrical debut plunges readers into the depths of a prison ruled by theocratic power, where the boundaries between memory and imagination begin to dissolve.

The story opens in the Black Box—solitary confinement—where an unnamed prisoner awakens with no memory of who he is or why he’s been imprisoned. Loony Kamal, the erratic guard assigned to escort him to Cell Number Four—the cell of the “Unbreakables”—is unconvinced. Can anyone truly forget everything? As Kamal probes for answers, the prisoner fights not to remember, but simply to survive.

What begins as an interrogation turns into a tense, shifting relationship—part battle of wills, part emotional reckoning. Unsure whether he’s inventing or recalling, the narrator begins to tell hypnotic tales: of grandmothers and peacocks, of love and loss, of a bricklayer building a wall ever higher through the night. These stories, flickering between past and dream, become lifelines—infusing the stark prison with myth, color, and hope.

Set in the charged aftermath of the Iranian revolution, At the Wall of the Almighty brims with poetic force and political urgency. It is a powerful meditation on resistance, identity, and the enduring strength of the imagination in the face of extreme duress.

For readers of dark but uplifting literature and anyone who believes in fiction’s power to bear witness, this novel is unforgettable.

About this title

About the Author

Farnoosh Moshiri grew up in a literary family in Tehran. She worked as a playwright and fiction writer in Iran, before fleeing the country in 1983 after her play was banned and its director and cast arrested. Winner of the Barthelme Memorial Fellowship at the University of Houston, she now teaches creative writing and literature. This is her first novel.

Reviews

This remarkably intricate and fascinating first novel dramatizes in luxuriant and resonant detail the ordeal of a political prisoner of the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s. He is Moshiris unnamed narrator: an accused ``Unbreakable'' who won't confess his (supposed) crimes or repent of his alleged apostasy from the ``faith'' brandished by zealots currently in power. Bullied and seduced by the mercurial prison guard ``Loony Kamal,'' and having realized that the ``only way to survive is to return,'' the narrator recalls and reinvents the history of his highborn liberal family and that of their village, surrounded (in fact, imprisoned) by an increasingly high wall that is being patiently built by the Sisyphean shape-changing figure of Ali the Bricklayera vivid embodiment of the spirit of a populace caught between its impulse toward independence and its obedience to archaic mores and laws. The artful confusions of time, place, and characters brilliantly reinforce Moshiri's commanding theme: that anyone, regardless of his actions, may be perceived as both a hero of, and a traitor to, Iran's ``Holy'' Revolution. A superb debut.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A despairing novel of revolution and corruption, Moshiri's debut is the story of a young man at El-Deen, a "university" in which the political prisoners of a fanatical Muslim movement are incarcerated. This nameless prisoner has survived the cruelest tortures, yet although his body remains intact, his mind is fragmented. He cannot remember who he is or why he is where he is. Taunted by the prison guard Loony Kamal, drugged, and beaten, the prisoner tries desperately to sort through the jumble of half-suppressed memories, dreams, and hallucinations that haunt his every waking moment. As frightening as it is moving, this is a stirring testament of love and courage and a condemnation of the abuses of power that often arise in times of revolution. Moshiri's narrator speaks in a poignantly simple voice, allowing us to see, through his eyes, the horrors of a revolution re-creating the very cruelties and excesses of the political structure it overthrows. Thoughtful but not for the faint of heart. Bonnie Johnston

Edition details

• Publisher: Interlink Books
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566563151
• ISBN 13: 9781566563154
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512