Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith - Hardcover

Nahai, Gina B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151003882 ISBN 13: 9780151003884

Publisher: Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

An epic tale blending Persian and Jewish cultures travels from the Tehran's Jewish ghetto, through Turkish whorehouses, to Los Angeles as Lili, with the help of Aunt Miriam the Moon, searches for her magical mother Roxanna the Angel. By the author of Cry of the Peacock. 35,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Gina B. Nahai was born in Iran and educated in Switzerland and the United States. She is the author of the award-winning and inter-nationally praised novel Cry of the Peacock. A frequent lecturer on Iranian Jewish history and the topic of exile, she has studied the politics of Iran for the U.S. Department of Defense. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Iranian author Nahai's (Cry of the Peacock) richly embroidered, mythopoeic new novel is a tale worthy of Scheherazade. Miriam the Moon weaves for her niece Lili the spellbinding story of how Lili's mother, Roxanna the Angel, in the grip of a destiny she could not control, abandoned her five-year-old daughter without explanation and vanished into the Iranian night; she remained missing for the next 13 years. ("Free will and conscious decisions are mere inventions of minds too feeble to accept the reality of our absurd existence," Miriam tells Lily.) Beginning with Roxanna's birth in 1938 in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, the narrative moves assuredly through her family's history and into her legend. At the time of her disappearance, in 1971, the point of view shifts from third to first person, the voice of Lili, the abandoned child. Six-year-old Lili is put on an airplane and sent off to a dreary Catholic boarding school in Pasadena, where she meets her guardian angel, a childhood friend of Roxanna's named Mercedez the Movie Star. Meanwhile, in Iran, the Shah's corrupt regime is overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and in the wave of Jewish persecution that follows, Miriam the Moon and her family flee to L.A. Eventually, Roxanna is spied in Turkey, and an affecting reunion with Lili ensues, although the ending, meant to be symbolic, does not quite ring true. The story moves along briskly, yet with a surreal edge, filled with characters who have such names as Alexandra the Cat and Jacob the Jello. The larger-than-life personalities of Roxanna and her family shine convincingly in the sections devoted to Iran, markedly less so when transplanted to L.A. Lili's struggle to know who she is, while fluidly rendered, lacks the resonance of Roxanna's, whose tale is marvelously compelling. 35,000 first printing; author tour; foreign rights sold to Germany, Sweden, Italy, the U.K., Greece and Holland.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Nahai (Cry of the Peacock, 1991) revisits Iran's Jewish community as she tells the moving if not always engrossing tale of one woman's struggle in a time of political turmoil. The saga of Roxanna begins in 1938 with her birth in Tehran's ghetto, and ends in 1980s Los Angeles. It is as much the story of a family increasingly affected by outside events as it is a low-key exploration of the conflict between destiny and choice. Nahai cuts early to the past, as the now-adult Lili recalls how, as a five-year-old, she saw her mother, Roxanna, grow wings and fly away. (Other clumsy flirtations with magical realism include sunflowers that give off light, sorrow that turns into body fat, and white feathers found after dreams of flight.) Warned that she is the bad-luck one, the eight-year-old Roxanna is given away to Alexandra, an eccentric Russian refugee. After Alexandra's death, Roxanna flees the ghetto, but finds herself trapped by love in a house on the ``Avenue of Faith.'' The house belongs to wealthy Teymur and his scheming wife, Frulein Claude; Roxanna marries their son Sohrab in order to be close to Teymur, whom she really loves. When their affair is discovered, shes kept a prisoner in the house, and in desperation runs away, leaving Lili behind. Working first as a prostitute and then as kitchen help in Turkey, Sohrab sends Lili to school in Los Angeles. Then, as the Islamic revolution begins, Roxanna's sisters flee to L.A.where Lili, still mourning her mother, is unwillingly united with them, and eventually even with Roxanna, now bloated with sorrow and regret. Lots of action, local color, and adventure, but not enough to give Roxanna's story the impact it demands. (First printing of 35,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A heady, sprawling tale of women, family, and country by the Iranian-born author of Cry of the Peacock (1991. o.p.), this novel is both mesmerizing and difficult in its portrayal of what to most Western readers will seem a hard, exotic society. Weaving together an impressive cast of characters and stories, it centers on Roxanna the Angel, the bad-luck daughter of a troubled family in Tehran's Jewish ghetto, and on her daughter, Lili, whom Roxanna abandons to an unsympathetic paternal household. The reader learns of Roxanna's history and of the mysterious power of flight that accompanies her need to escape the sorrow of this history, of Lili's nearly lethal anxiety for her mother, which maintains her through a lonely childhood and adolescence, and of the powerful attraction of freedom in spite of the hardships freedom can bring. Against the backdrop of the fall of the Shah and the flight of Iranian Jews to America, this unique mother-daughter story unfolds powerfully and unforgettably. Highly recommended.?Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington P.L., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151003882
• ISBN 13: 9780151003884
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376