The Age of Orphans

Starred review from December 8, 2008
Ironic, beautifully written, brutal and ugly, Khadivi's ambitious debut novel follows a Kurdish boy who is tragically and violently conscripted into the shah's army after his own people are slaughtered in battle. Assigned the name Reza Pejman Khourdi—Reza after the first shah of Iran, Pejman meaning heartbroken and Khourdi to denote he's an ethnic Kurd—the boy suppresses all things Kurdish within him, fueled by a sense of self-preservation and self-loathing. Channeling fear and hate into brutal acts against the Kurds, Reza makes a quick climb up the military career ladder, eventually gaining an appointment to Kermanshah, a Kurdish region in the north of Iran. There, as overseer of his own people, Reza promotes Kurdish assimilation and the budding nation of Iran while mercilessly silencing voices of Kurdish independence. As he grows old with his Iranian wife, Meena, Reza's internal conflicts simmer, then boil over, with unexpected and terrible results. This difficult but powerful novel, the first of a trilogy, introduces a writer with a strong, unflinching voice and a penetrating vision.

Starred review from February 15, 2009
The 2008 recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, Khadivi offers a remarkable first novel that does not shy away from harsh subject matter. This first installment in a trilogy about three generations of Kurdish men is set in Persia in the 1920s as Reza Shah Pahlari comes to power. The story tracks the life of a Kurdish boy who loses his family in a massacre and then is taken in by the very soldiers responsible for making him an orphan. Reborn as Reza Khourdi in honor of the shah, the youth is so well indoctrinated by the shah's military that his superior officers decide to reward his performance as a soldier by giving him a command post in his homeland. Reza returns to the region with his new wife to fight his own people, Kurdish rebels, and continue their brutal subjugation in pursuit of the shah's vision of a modernized Iran. Khadivi excels at capturing Reza's spiritual torture as he subdues his personal tribal history, often at the violent expense of others. With her eloquent portrayal of Reza, Khadivi has created an epitomic character representing so many 20th-century and current cultural, ethnic, and national identity clashes. Highly recommended.Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

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