The Gardens of Consolation

by Parisa Reza, Adriana Hunter (Translator)

Overview

A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2016

Parisa Reza has written a powerful love story filled with scenes of hope and heartbreak centered around an Iranian woman named Talla, "a formidable and hard-to-forget heroine (Publisher's Weekly)," whose pursuit for a better life runs with the backdrop of a rapidly changing Iran. 

In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. 

Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate first-hand in his country's political and social upheavals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609453503
Publisher:	Europa
Publication date:	12/06/2016
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Parisa Reza was born in Tehran in 1965 to a family of intellectuals and artists, and moved to France at the age of seventeen. She was awarded the Prix Senghor 2015 for her first novel, The Gardens of Consolation.

Adriana Hunter is a British translator of French literature. She has translated more than fifty French novels including Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb and The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa. She was awarded the 2011 Scott Moncrief Prize for her translation of Véronique Olmi.

Editorial Reviews

Parisa Reza's luminous first novel, The Gardens of Consolation, ends with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 but begins centuries earlier. Or so it seems. The opening scene, certainly, evokes an ancient land. "To the east, bare earth, as far as the eye can see. To the west, hills, in places crumpled as a camel's hide, on others smooth as a woman's breast." A young wife, riding a donkey, crosses the desert, her husband walking beside her, leaving her birthplace for the first time. "In Ghamsar, at the gates of hell and the source of paradise, blooms Mohamed's flower; it is here, in this village, to the west of the scorching desert of the Iranian plateau, that the Persian rose grows." Here, Reza writes, "the wind does not raise dust but spreads the smell of roses." The atmosphere is heady, sumptuous; each page seems scented with rosewater. Then suddenly an automobile roars past. To Talla, the monster is "a black headless hulk with bulging eyes . . . its round feet powering toward her at inconceivable speed." She is, after all, only twelve and this is only the year 1299, according to the Iranian calendar. That is 1918 by Western reckoning, but Reza waits almost fifty pages before translating the date.

From this dreamlike beginning onward, as Reza follows the lives of Talla, her husband, Sardar, and later their son, Bahram, she keeps us mildly disoriented. One of her chapters, for example, begins, "On the first day of fall in 1331, when Harry S. Truman was president of the United States . . . " Later we learn that the U.S. coup against the reformer Mohammad Mossadegh occurs on "Mordad 28th, 1332." For an Iranian writer mapping complex terrain — both personal and political — this is a clever tactic. Familiar historical events are lifted out of known historical time and the reader, briefly wrong-footed, pays closer attention. Reza's main characters, too, though vivid and substantial, seem timeless. "It is these masters who carry the world," Sardar reassures himself. "If he were offered the opportunity, what would he decide? Nothing. Everything is right as it is: the land, the flock, water, tobacco."

Talla and Sardar endure political upheavals and personal tragedies. Illiterate, shrewd, and resilient, they inhabit a world ruled as much by superstition as by the shah, accumulating land and placing all their hopes in their brilliant son. They are familiar types, and Reza, for the most part, spares them complex inner lives. Like a sympathetic anthropologist, she delineates the emotions and responses of her characters as though inviting us to observe rather than empathize. Of bereaved Talla, for example, Reza writes, "the winds of life carry her as she leaves one place for another, heavy with the memories of a death. She follows the road, such is her sorrow." Yet the compressed force of Reza's language not only commands our attention but also creates a subtle, brooding suspense that intensifies as her narrative proceeds inexorably toward revolution. Six decades are spanned in five sections, beginning with "Havva, the Innocence of Hell" and ending with "Elaheh, Goddess of Shipwrecked Souls," Havva being Talla's young sister, who dies following a horrifying punishment by their father, and Elaheh a fellow student who loves Bahram but marries an older intellectual.

For all the tumult that it portrays, however, The Gardens of Consolation is a serene epic that proceeds at a stately pace. In this translation from the French, (Reza was born in Tehran in 1965 but has lived in France since the age of seventeen), even the most brutal act is described with almost magisterial composure. "A scream of pain and disbelief tore through the half light and hit them full in the face before reverberating around the whole village," Reza writes of Havva's torture. "Then the wind picked up the child's wail and carried it off into the mountains." And decades later, as a violent coup rages, Bahram watches a veteran revolutionary "calmly and carefully dropping papers into the flames one by one. As if defeat has become familiar to him . . . all that matters is the road you take, and that road leads from one disaster to the next." In the breadth and wry fatalism of her vision, Reza reveals her debt to Iranian women writers such as Simin Daneshvar and, more recently, Goli Taraghi, both of whom are included in the invaluable 2011 anthology Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, edited by Reza Aslan. So rooted, indeed, is Parisa Reza's writing in the fertile soil of Iran that The Gardens of Consolation seems to contain an entire nation.

Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe, has written for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, among other publications.

Reviewer: Anna Mundow

The Barnes & Noble Review

★ 10/03/2016
Iran’s early 20th-century political upheavals drive this absorbing debut novel about a working-class couple and their gifted, socially ambitious son. The novel, by Iranian author Reza, opens in the early 1920s, with young newlyweds Talla and Sardar Amir traveling from their native Qamsar to the suburbs of Tehran, where Sardar has established himself as a shepherd. For the couple, who are illiterate and unworldly, the migration proves emboldening but also disorienting. Sardar is gripped by the “contained suffering that went by the name of exile,” and Talla bristles at unfamiliar class hierarchies and fluctuating customs regarding chadors. They later move to Shemiran, where they raise a son, Bahram, who begins “breaking with continuity” of his parents’ provincialism. Under a mandate from Reza Shah, Bahram begins attending school at six and quickly finds himself to be an avid pupil. After receiving his village’s first high school diploma, Bahram goes on to attend the prestigious Tehran University, where he becomes involved in the National Front, a nationalist party. Reza, by weaving intimate domestic details with explications of Iran’s shifting fortunes (the nationalization of the country’s oil and the overthrow of Mosaddegh feature prominently here), succeeds in imbuing the Amirs’ story with stirring sociopolitical importance. She is uncommonly generous to her characters, and Talla is a formidable, hard-to-forget heroine. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Gardens of Consolation

"[An] exquisite, deceptively quiet novel...evolves from an intimate chronicle of Talla and Sardar’s provincial lives into a sweeping tour through early-20th-century Iran."
—The New York Times

"Iranian French author Parisa Reza’s stunning debut, The Gardens of Consolation, unfolds over decades of fascinating Iranian history and culture...The novel pulls you in like a waking dream. The writing is lush and evocative... this is not so much a story of history, of political upheaval, as a rich, intimate story of people.”
—Boston Globe

“Yet the compressed force of Reza’s language not only commands our attention but also creates a subtle, brooding suspense that intensifies as her narrative proceeds inexorably toward revolution...So rooted, indeed, is Parisa Reza’s writing in the fertile soil of Iran that The Gardens of Consolation seems to contain an entire nation.”
—Barnes & Noble Review

“The novel is at its best when it evokes the family’s comfort, despite the upheavals, in sensual, timeless pleasures: vats hot with rose petals and lamb, ‘the smell of jasmine and damp soil.’”
—The New Yorker

"An absorbing debut novel. Reza...succeeds in imbuing the Amir’s story with stirring sociopolitical importance...Talla is formidable, hard-to-forget heroine.”
—Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review) 

"Winner of 2015's Prix Senghor for a debut novel by a Francophone writer, this compelling book raises important questions about indulgence, gender, community, and the impact of politics on everyday life."
—Kirkus Reviews

“A beautiful tour de force of a novel.”
—World Literature Today

“[Reza] never loses track of her intimate focus on one family whose lives are shaped by love, loyalty, tradition, and the continual adjustments required as political power shifts.”
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC

“Reza presents to the reader a very different view of Iran than that reported by newspapers and magazines. Though Reza left the country when she was 17, the land has made an indelible mark on her. Her love for the struggling shepherds and farmers is palpable.”
—Historical Novels Review

“The Gardens of Consolation heralds the arrival of yet another prodigiously talented French-Iranian author, Parisa Reza, whose outstanding debut novel, like the works of Marjane Satrapi and Fariba Hachtroudi, voices a side of Iran rarely glimpsed in Western media.”
—Shelf Awareness

"Hunter’s excellent translation allows English readers to enjoy how Reza effectively interweaves vivid storytelling and insightful commentary. This engaging novel is a must-read for anyone interested in trying to understand the true nature of Iran..."
—Booklist

"Informative but not didactic, this book reads like a popular saga, simply told and with recognizable characters whom many readers will appreciate."
—Library Journal

“[The Gardens of Consolation] is beautifully written, and rather tough emotionally – and is soaked in the desert and towns of an Iran struggling to find its feet in the modern world, to grow, to educate its people, and to westernise.” 
—Shiny New Books

“The Iranian-French author’s debut juxtaposes Iran’s rural roots with its explosive urban history in the story of one humble family that travels across the divide.”
—Boris Kachka, Vulture

"At once a love story and a chronicle of political and social upheaval, Reza's novel is an important introduction to some of the major turning-points in Iranian history."
—Book Riot

"Reza's writing, aided by Adriana Hunter's talented translation from the French, is lyrical, the text almost reads like a fable. At once simple and vivid, the author brings Iranian history, attitudes and politics to life in an engrossing, entertaining and informative way.”
—BookBrowse

From the Publisher

10/01/2016
A Prix Senghor 2015 winner by Tehran-born Reza, who came to France as a teenager in the 1980s, this debut opens in a remote mountain village in 1920s Iran. When teenage Sardar marries barely pubescent Talla and takes her away to live on the outskirts of Tehran, she becomes the first female to leave the village and is thereafter spoken of with awe. Sardar's a steady man and Talla rather a blazing temperament, and they eventually have a son, Bahram, who's smart, cheeky, and a devoted follower of progressive politician Mohammed Mosaddegh. Social and political upheaval go hand in hand, as Sardar becomes entranced by radio and Reza Shah Pahlavi comes to power and bans the chador, horrifying Talla not because of religious conviction but her fear of the unknown. Reza thus provides a carefully wrought lesson in 20th-century Iranian history. VERDICT Informative but not didactic, this book reads like a popular saga, simply told and with recognizable characters whom many readers will appreciate.

Library Journal

2016-09-19
Love, lust, and politics can sometimes exist harmoniously. They can also clash.In the early 1920s, when Talla was 9 years old and living in Ghamsar, Iran, she married Sardar, a slightly older boy from the same remote village. Although it was an arranged marriage, in keeping with tradition, the two had eyed one another and approved the match. And although the union was not consummated until three years laterSardar had big dreams and opted to travel to the nations capital and establish himself before settling into domesticityby the time they moved to a Tehran suburb as husband and wife, it was clear to everyone that they were in love. There was heartbreak, too, as they lost one child and then another. Finally, in 1933, son Bahram was born. Not surprisingly, he became the apple of his parents eyes and was heavily indulged. Unlike his illiterate mother and father, Bahram attended school and excelled, eventually winning a scholarship to university. He also became a womanizer, and the novel charts the factors that led him there. The book is set against a constantly changing political milieu, and readers are made privy to the fall of the Qajar dynasty and the power grab of Reza Khan, who emerged as shah. Bahrams support of socialist Mohammad Mosaddegh and Khalil Maleki, men who eschewed alliances with both Russia and the West, is posited in opposition to the ideas of Sardar and Talla, peasants unconcerned with politics. As they see it, life is unchanging; regardless of who is in power, they will toil and, later, revel in simple pleasures. The contrast is riveting. Winner of 2015s Prix Senghor for a debut novel by a Francophone writer, this compelling book raises important questions about indulgence, gender, community, and the impact of politics on everyday life.

Kirkus Reviews