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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is impossible to rate for me. I see how this is a masterpiece of 20th century Iranian literature and the writing style is superb.
But i did not like reading this book. I found the protagonist/ narrator extremely annoying and boring. It's the 21st century and I just cannot deal with wannabe genius narrators from upper class families that are oh so tortured by life.
This is a very clear case of a book that is very much not for me. I see why it is important and good and I see the talent and vision. But I am unable to enjoy it. Sorry.
But i did not like reading this book. I found the protagonist/ narrator extremely annoying and boring. It's the 21st century and I just cannot deal with wannabe genius narrators from upper class families that are oh so tortured by life.
This is a very clear case of a book that is very much not for me. I see why it is important and good and I see the talent and vision. But I am unable to enjoy it. Sorry.
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
The experience of reading this novel was like tumbling down an escherian staircase. Repetition of certain scenes and phrases seduces the reader and compels them to bear witness to the splintering of the protagonist's ego. In the end the protagonist ends up having lived more lives than his autobiographical memory could reconstruct, condemned to a traumatic repetition of intensities that pulsated in excess of the latter. Autobiography implies an organizing principle, a head. But the shadow cast by the protagonist is acephalic...
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Disturbing, yet captivating. I couldn't put the book down until the very end.
This was so weirdly compelling, like a dark fever dream.. I would say that it was the only book that I read so far that felt very much like watching an Ingmar Bergman film.. The existential dread, the shadows and darkness, the chiaroscuro, the constant obsession with death...I can see why it's a classic.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder
Minor: Sexual assault
Don’t get me wrong this had very pretty writing and had a dream like affect (almost nightmarish) upon reading it. But that’s about it.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was awful. I probably would have liked it when I was younger because I thought disgusting and perturbing books like these were actually very deep or something, but this is simply 130 pages of a guy schizo rambling nonstop about his opium fantasies/hallucinations of murdering a woman, having sex with her corpse, chopping her up to hide the body parts in a suitcase, as well as calling her a slut every two pages.
This book doesn't provide any type of insightful commentary on the type of violence it very explicitly depicts (it's just symbolism!!), or on the amount of men alienated in Iran's society at the time, it just assumes the reader will read even more about what it all actually means after they're done with the novel. And idk, maybe it says something interesting about Iranian history (commercial and cultural relations between Iran and India?, the westernization of iranian society?) which is lost on me, but nothing in it made me want to learn more about it. The writing wasn't anything special (this is a new translation which is supposed to be very good), and it didn't do anything exciting stylistically or structurally either. I kept rolling my eyes at all the "popular highlights" on my kindle edition because it was all edgy stuff that tried very hard to sound like Camus.
I really have no idea where the amazing reviews are coming from. An old book with a dumb myth behind it (ohhh, anyone who reads this book will commit suicide!) and disturbing, unjustified events happening in it is not good literature. Comparing this to Kafka or Dostoevsky is ridiculous, "nihilism", "gothic" and "surrealism" are just meaningless buzzwords used to connect this to way better works and styles that the author tried to replicate.
This book doesn't provide any type of insightful commentary on the type of violence it very explicitly depicts (it's just symbolism!!), or on the amount of men alienated in Iran's society at the time, it just assumes the reader will read even more about what it all actually means after they're done with the novel. And idk, maybe it says something interesting about Iranian history (commercial and cultural relations between Iran and India?, the westernization of iranian society?) which is lost on me, but nothing in it made me want to learn more about it. The writing wasn't anything special (this is a new translation which is supposed to be very good), and it didn't do anything exciting stylistically or structurally either. I kept rolling my eyes at all the "popular highlights" on my kindle edition because it was all edgy stuff that tried very hard to sound like Camus.
I really have no idea where the amazing reviews are coming from. An old book with a dumb myth behind it (ohhh, anyone who reads this book will commit suicide!) and disturbing, unjustified events happening in it is not good literature. Comparing this to Kafka or Dostoevsky is ridiculous, "nihilism", "gothic" and "surrealism" are just meaningless buzzwords used to connect this to way better works and styles that the author tried to replicate.