City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The age of orphans, a novel, Laleh Khadivi

eng

no index present

fiction

The age of orphans

Laleh Khadivi

"Deep in the Zagros Mountains of western Persia, a young Kurdish boy is called to fight. Though he is still very much a boy - in love with his Maman, fascinated by birds, and dutiful to his stern and powerful Baba - he feigns bravery and follows his tribe into a massacre at the hands of the armies of the shah. As the only survivor, the boy is adopted by the same soldiers who killed his father and uncles, and he is told that he is no longer a Kurd but a soldier for the newly minted nation of Iran. The orphan is given a name, Reza Khourdi, as well as an arbitrary age and orders to forget his Kurdish identity at all costs."

a novel

"The Age of orphans follows Reza through his meteoric rise in rank, his marriage to an educated Tehrani woman, and his eventual deployment as a captain back to the Zagros Mountains, where the ever-defiant Kurds are demanding a nation of their own. As a representative of the shah, Reza must suppress the revolts and uprisings of the local Kurdish tribes - the people he has begun to recognize as his own. Here, his carefully crafted persona begins to crack." "The story of Reza Khourdi is that of the twentieth-century everyman at the crossroads of history: Cast out of the clan in the name of nation, progress, and modernity, he is left yearning for impossible dreams of love, land, and home."--BOOK JACKET