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Dagbok i kilskrift

Kader Abdolah

3.84 · Rating details · 2,198 ratings · 173 reviews

I en grotta i Saffransberget lät den förste kungen av Persien hugga in en text i kilskrift om Mahdi (Messias) som ska komma och befria världen. Den dövstumme Agha Akbar förs till grottan för att kopiera kilskriften och skapar ett eget språk som han använder i sin dagbok. Många år senare sitter hans son Ismaiel i exil och försöker tyda dagboksanteckningarna. Det blir en res ...more

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Hardcover, 314 pages

Published 2011 by Nordstedts (first published December 31st 1999)

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Feb 02, 2015 Elena rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Kader Abdolah is a congenial story teller. He interweaves a father and son story with ancient tales and songs and then modern politics and the experience of exile. There is a mystical mountain cave with an ancient cuneiform inscription,the symbol of lasting Persian culture. The son, called Ishmael (another famous exile), is born into a provincial Persian family living in subsistence almost biblical conditions, then the son's native intelligence and reading ability get him to the university of Te Kader Abdolah is a congenial story teller. He interweaves a father and son story with ancient tales and songs and then modern politics and the experience of exile. There is a mystical mountain cave with an ancient cuneiform inscription,the symbol of lasting Persian culture. The son, called Ishmael (another famous exile), is born into a provincial Persian family living in subsistence almost biblical conditions, then the son's native intelligence and reading ability get him to the university of Teheran to study physics and he's suddenly in the modern world. (Don't read on if you want to experience the plot without advance "spoilers.")There he is swept up into the revolution against the Shah, clandestine activity funded by the Soviet Union. There's lyric poetry mixed in with harsh reality, and a welter of narrative voices. I was in Germany when the Shah visited in 1967, the fanaticism of the students(German and Persian)and their fierce hatred of the Shah was astonishing. The Shah's secret police was capable of torture and terrible deeds, but by the standards of the middle east, he'd done a lot to improve living conditions, health etc. I wondered at the time if this hatred was fueled by the Russians somehow, hoping to take over an oil rich nation. Then I thought,maybe I was being affected by Cold War paranoia. Well, it turns out the Russians really were involved in the actions against the Shah. All those bright, youthful, poetry-reciting, energetic students were tragically gullible. Somehow they thought overthrowing the Shah would automatically usher in a free society. Then it got worse as we know, much much worse. The Mullahs persecuted people in far worse ways, and wrecked the economy on top of it. The narrator shows this in realistic vignettes. In the middle of all this are many enchanting motifs. Just one example: whenever things get really dangerous or hopeless, one character always stops to offer another a glass of tea...Towards the end Ishmael and his father have a mountain top experience before he flees over the mountain to the Soviet Union, on the way to Europe. Ishmael himself, and luckily his wife and daughter, do find freedom on land reclaimed land from the sea in the Netherlands. There he helps an elderly Dutchman walk over the dunes to see the ocean...So there is a happy ending. And happily the novel was written in 2000, so before 9/11 in the US and before the Van Gogh murder in the Netherlands. One secretly hopes that the great Persian culture of the ancient world survives somewhere, perhaps sleeping in a mountain cave and re-emerges to dispel the hatred and violence that prevail now. Unfortunately, democracy depends on institution-building, slow and hard work over centuries, and it is never finished, like building dikes.

NB The author looks exactly like Nietzsche, mustache, intense eyes, tousled hair. And he writes a bit like Zarathustra.

...more

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May 07, 2011 Cath Van rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

Writing a good novel is one thing. Writing a good novel in a language not your own is something else. Kader Abdolah fled his country in 1985 and became a political refugee in The Netherlands in 1988. He learned the language and continued his writing career -had already published two books in Iran- in Dutch.Kader Abdolah often says that in the beginning of his writing in Dutch he had a limited amount of words available. It is exactly that which has in my opinion contributed much to his distinctiv ...more

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Jun 22, 2017 Diyar Ahmed rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Eight months ago, I have read THE TIN DRUM, it was about a dwarf in the days of the second world war. Kader Abdola talks about a deaf-mute man in the days of Reza Shah and then after islamic revolution. There is no similarity between these two stories, but they have only one thing in common, they are the best. The technique of writing is very special, you cannot easily find another writer with this quality.

The idea that influenced me to read this book was only the name of the wrtiter. He is pers ...more

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Sep 12, 2007 Ilman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A great work of fiction. Clever plot. Wonderful description. Poetic and tragic.

But read this one simply as a fictional work, and not as a text book for the history of Iran.

Written by a left-wing activist, you can expect what he will say about the Iranian history. Well, I cannot blame him. Like beauty, history is in the eye of the beholder.

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May 29, 2014 Fijke rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Since Dutch is my native language I read the original Dutch version of this book, but I'm reviewing it in English for the sake of community and accessibility.

I found this book somewhat difficult to get into storywise, because as a reader you start out with very little information about what is happening in the book and it doesn't seem to really go anywhere, but after a while I started to see that this might have been intentional, because that style actually fits the story really well. The book d ...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Ron rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This autobiographical novel is a lot of things. Part politics, history, geography, religion, it also takes its place among the growing literature of refugees and displacement. Meanwhile, it tells a heart-felt personal story about an educated man and his father, a deaf-mute carpet mender. Set in Iran during many decades of the twentieth century, it includes historical events and social changes and ends with the arrival of the year 2000. The two shahs, Mossadegh, and Khomeini take their time on st This autobiographical novel is a lot of things. Part politics, history, geography, religion, it also takes its place among the growing literature of refugees and displacement. Meanwhile, it tells a heart-felt personal story about an educated man and his father, a deaf-mute carpet mender. Set in Iran during many decades of the twentieth century, it includes historical events and social changes and ends with the arrival of the year 2000. The two shahs, Mossadegh, and Khomeini take their time on stage, each leaving their mark for better or worse. The Soviet Union looms along a 1200-mile border to the north; Saddam Hussein declares war; the West extracts oil. Meanwhile, Aga Akbar, the father of the title, lives a life absorbed by a confounding world, dependent first on an opium-addicted uncle and then a son, Ishmael, who is writing his story after his death.

The mystery at the center of the book is our inability to know what Aga Akbar thinks and feels. Trapped in a sensory world without hearing or speech, he communicates by a simple, private sign language, but the novel makes no attempt to represent his actual experience. This is all the more tantalizing because he has kept an indecipherable notebook written in cuneiform, which he has first seen on the wall of a mountain cave near his village.

The book is also Ishmael's story, growing up before his time as he cares for his father, their roles reversed, especially in his efforts to help his father understand the world. At one point he tries to help him comprehend the solar system by showing him a picture of astronauts on the moon. The deep love of father for son is made more poignant by their separation, first as Ishmael goes off to university in Tehran and becomes an active member of the communist party, working for the overthrow of one oppressive government after another, then as he flees to the West, to eventually find sanctuary in the Netherlands, where he is writing this book. Well translated from Dutch, it deserves a wide readership as we come ourselves to understand a world we have been deaf and blind to. ...more

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Nov 07, 2018 Valerie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-fiction, middle-east, favorites, literary-fiction, belgium-netherlands

A son’s desire to ‘translate’ a notebook kept by his late deafmute father, written in an undecipherable cuneiform script, acts as a starting point for his recollections about his childhood in Iran, his relationship with his father, Iran’s political upheaval throughout the Shah and Khomeini’s rule, and his resulting forced political exile. The book repeatedly shifts between narrating the life of the son, Ismaiel, and his father, Aga Akbar, but I felt that deep down the book was really about Ismai ...more

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Jan 09, 2015 Fiona rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, general-fiction, around-the-world-fiction

I loved the House of the Mosque so was really looking forward to this. It's a moving story but I really only enjoyed the first and last sections which focus on Aga Akbar who is a deaf mute. The middle section is Ishmael's story, Aga's son, and I couldn't warm to him at all. We learn how political changes in Iran affected the lives of ordinary people. Ishmael chooses to join an opposition party, knowing that he was endangering the lives of his family. He is selfish and obsessed with his own role ...more

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Jun 16, 2007 Flora rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: lovers of the written word

Shelves: books-that-take-me-to-other-countri

For me, the book offered a lyrical lesson about the history and culture of Iran, a nation I know so little about. The writing is exquisite, and the story of the mute man's life is also memorable. ...more

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Sep 15, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is a very engaging tale, with fascinating characters, a good story and plenty of payload about the history and culture of a place few of us know anything about.

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Jun 20, 2016 Lisa Faye rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I wasn't totally sure if I liked this book, but when I announced that I was done at the breakfast table this morning, my daughter asked me what the book was about and I realized that it was a really good book.

It is a book about the decisions you make and the work of trying to measure the good and bad of those decisions as you age. It is a book about families and how they make us who we are but also challenge who we become ever day. It is a book about trying to understand others despite all the b ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Doriana Bisegna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I loved the way this novel delved into the history of Iran with this wonderful cast of characters. A true surprise of a read. I picked up this book years ago at a book festival and hoped for the best. It sounded different and exotic with the author's pen name. I know so little about Iran except for the often spoken about Shah and Khomeini...well now I know just a little more but the little more I do know has intrigued me enough to discover more. That is the joy of reading...it entices you to dis ...more

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Jul 15, 2013 Roma rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, nederlandse-roman

Not especially well-written, rather chaotic, and the author didn't succeed to make me care very much about the characters, though the historical material was somewhat interesting to me. ...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Karlo Mikhail rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The English translation of My Father’s Notebook is the only book by Kader Abdolah that I’ve read. The novel is also my first and only encounter with the exiled Iranian writer who now lives in the Netherlands. But the issues Abdolah’s book highlight on life in Iran under the Shah, the heroic struggles of the leftist resistance movement, and the eventual ascendancy of the Islamist mullahs in the power struggle following the revolution of 1979, are all relevant and makes My Father’s Notebook a rewa The English translation of My Father’s Notebook is the only book by Kader Abdolah that I’ve read. The novel is also my first and only encounter with the exiled Iranian writer who now lives in the Netherlands. But the issues Abdolah’s book highlight on life in Iran under the Shah, the heroic struggles of the leftist resistance movement, and the eventual ascendancy of the Islamist mullahs in the power struggle following the revolution of 1979, are all relevant and makes My Father’s Notebook a rewarding read.

The history of Iran, like the history of all hitherto human societies, is a history of the struggles between the oppressor and the oppressed, the exploiter and the exploited, the dominator and the dominated. Nowhere is this as clear as in that brief period called the 20th Century when Iran fell in the hands of successive authoritarian regimes – from the British colonizing power to the two Shahs and eventually the Islamist dictatorship. My Father’s Notebook is an attempt at coming to terms with this history.

The narrator Ishmael shifts between an account of a life of melancholia and nostalgia in the Netherlands and memories of his own life and that of his deaf-mute father, Aga Akbar, back in Iran. Ishmael makes use of his father’s indecipherable notebook, which is written in cuneiform, in retracing the past. Being deaf-mute, Aga Akbar developed his own unique system of writing from the ancient cuneiform of the first king of Persia carved on the cave walls of Saffron Mountain which he first visited with his uncle as a child.

Ishmael thus grapples with the recollections of a deaf-mute father who he assisted as personal guide and translator since his childhood – but he never completely understood. His accounts of his father’s notes give the reader a peek of life in the Iranian countryside. Aga Akbar is the illegitimate son of a noble. He serves as a guide to archaeologists visiting the caves of Saffron Mountain for the cuneiforms. He trains to become a carpet mender and becomes the most renowned of menders in his province.

Aga Akbar personally encounters the first Shah, who rides into his village to personally oversee the building of train tracks through the countryside, and for which Aga Akbar and his entire village volunteered. He marries the strong-willed countrywoman Tina, sires 4 children, and eventually moves from the village by Saffron Mountain to the city where his handicrafts skills are rendered useless as he becomes absorbed into factory work. Aga Akbar’s life story eventually intertwines with that of the younger narrator.

Ishmael goes on to study at the University of Tehran but subsequently dropout to pursue full time work as a professional leftwing revolutionary. His party agitates against the Shah, organize a clandestine movement, and wage a guerrilla war with the Cuban Revolution as their model. Of course, they were eventually outmaneuvered by the Imams. But more than the standard academic postcolonial valorization of exile, My Father’s Notebook gives us a glimpse into the lost promise held by the possibility of a genuine revolution in Iran.

This is the tragedy of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. After the mobilization of masses of Iranians toppled the authoritarian regime of the Shah, the Islamists led by Khomeini outmaneuvered other democratic, secular, leftwing forces and seized power. The mullahs initiated a counter-revolution that pushed the country in a regressive direction, back towards the restoration of a feudal theocratic rule of which the only thing new is it’s being propped up by the worst modern instruments of state repression.

The outcome of the Iranian struggle thus presents a strong warning about what a defeat for revolutionary left forces could mean. As in Germany and Spain in the 1930s or Chile in the 1970s, where the fascists won the hearts and minds of the petty bourgeois, the Islamists of Iran were able to win over large sections of the rising urban masses and a feudal landlord class that feared the prospects of genuine social revolution and the consequential redistribution of their rural estates.

The novel ends with the escape of one of Ishmael’s comrades from the Imam’s jails, an escape that symbolizes the militancy and indomitable spirit of the Iranian people. The spirit of resistance is still in the air in Iran even under the most repressive conditions, as the frequent outbreak of youth and workers protests in recent years have shown. It is the specter of this rising up of the Iranian people, and not US and Israeli war of aggression against Iranian sovereignty that spells the hope for real liberation of the people of Iran. ...more

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Jul 17, 2013 Louisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dutch-literature

An Iranian man living in the Netherlands tries to unravel his past through the entries of a notebook written in an incomprehensible cuneiform script. The notebook was written by his deaf father, who never learned to talk or read, who knew his way in the Iranian mountains like no other, who communicated only in sign language with his son and others in his family. What Aga Akbar could not communicate, he wrote down in his notebook.

Spijkerschrift is an exotic story of mountain caves and Persian tap ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Dennis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A truly beautiful live story about the relationship between a boy, later, a man, and his deaf-mute father, both with their flaws but whose love and respect for each other never diminishes. This is told against the background of two rebellions in Iran, one against the Shah and the other against the Ayatollah. This was the book's weak point for me as I never felt the passion or terror of the struggle, even as the protagonist is in the middle of it, even as he's forced to escape with his life and g ...more

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Sep 21, 2017 Gabrielle rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book is a quick read which provides a fictional (yet often historically accurate) about a boy and his father and life in Iran. I liked how the book provided a bit of a historical introduction into the land without going to deep. The annecdotes on the father vary in quality. Overall though the book was a nice mix of fiction and history, albeit the ending seeming a bit rushed.

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Dec 13, 2007 Katie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Readers who enjoy historical fiction

Shelves: bookclub-read

I didn't get into the book as quickly as I often do. But, it was intriguing enough to keep me going back. I liked it more and more as I read on, and really liked it by the end. It was very interesting to learn some Iranian history through this book. ...more

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Oct 10, 2008 Leslie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Leslie by: I just happened upon this book at a family owned book store.

This books allows us to see a glimpse of life in Iran during the last few political changes. The part the US and England played in Iran is despicable. The book is uplifting even as the tragedies of the times unfold. I recommend this book to all my friends.

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May 27, 2013 Caren rated it liked it · review of another edition

didn't finish it.... maybe someday.
it is a good book, maybe even great....
beautifully written, so i do recommend it.
i'm just to preoccupied right now to enjoy it fully...

when i finish i'll probably be adding a star ...more

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Dec 09, 2015 Zehra rated it liked it · review of another edition

I loved how the story gave an insight into the Iranian revolution, their freedom fighters and the lives of ordinary people. I enjoy reading about different countries, their culture, history and politics so I really liked this book.

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Aug 07, 2016 Laurie added it · review of another edition

A moving memoir of a deaf mute father, of the shah's father, of Persian rugs, of Persian poetry...Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Hafez? The narrator himself is an Irani leftist who escapes to Holland and looks back with nostalgia. ...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Joey Barkhouse rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was a trip to a faraway time and place. I couldn't put it down. I will now look for anything by this author ...more

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Dec 07, 2009 Elaine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

What a wonderful book to read. It was brilliant!

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May 03, 2010 Eunice rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Loved this story. I think it helped that I heard the writer speak so got a firsthand account of the story. I also shook his hand, which further propelled my adoration of the book.

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Jun 13, 2010 Shahnaz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

On my list to read
I finished reading this book at 29. of August. A good book but the still of writing reminded me the book of "the hourse by the mosque" of the same author. ...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Cody rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A tale that took me far away, but not always to places I wanted to go. Nice escapist novel for me.

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Dec 25, 2011 Norah marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Norah by: Sue

Shelves: novels, xmas-birthday-present

A Christmas present from my sister-in-law

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Jun 27, 2012 Monique rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned

Read to half the book, but could no longer make myself stick to it. Just wasn't my cup of tea. ...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book combined so many of my favorite elements: interesting characters, submersion into another culture, poetic writing, relevance.

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About Kader Abdolah

Kader Abdolah

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Kader Abdolah is the penname of Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani, an Iranian writer who also writes in Dutch. Abdolah has lived in the Netherlands since 1988.

He studied physics at the Arak College of Science and fled the country as a political refugee in 1988. Today he lives in Delft (The Netherlands), writing under a pseudonym made up of the names of two murdered friends. Het huis van de mos ...more

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Quotes from Dagbok i kilskrift

“Los persas no necesitan haber vivido el amor en sus propias carnes. En sus cuentos y mitos, incluso en el libro sagrado, el amor está por todas partes.” — 7 likes

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