Book Description

Alive with all the flavor and ferment of contemporary Iran, The Book Of Absent People is an exquisitely crafted novel that at once creates an exotic feast for the mind and the senses. As it unravels the haunting tale of a young man's search for his missing brother, it takes the reader on an unpredictable voyage of discovery into the depths of one family's innermost passions. It is the last day of the month of Khordad and Khan Papa Doctor, physician and great patriarch of the Heshmat Nezamis, has examined his final patient. For reasons which become startlingly apparent, the reticent Khan Papa Doctor has become staunchly devoted to reuniting his family - a family split apart by scandal, secrets, and ultimately, by destiny. When youngest son Rokni, a dreamer and an artist, is called to his father's side, little does he know the strange journey that lies ahead. He is recruited to seek out his older brother Zia, the hotheaded revolutionary who long ago fled the house of the Heshmat Nezamis...and it will be a quest that brings Rokni face to face with the truths of his noble family. He will learn about Khan Papa Doctor's first wife who died mysteriously and in disgrace, and who is never discussed. He will understand, at long last, why his beautiful sister lives in her own private world, unable to reach those sharing a common reality. He will discover, too, the startling complexities of his father's past as well as the momentous contributions the Heshmat Nezamis made to the turbulent history of their proud homeland. Gracefully told with the magic of a writer who is part chronicler and part mystic, here is a story of people both physically and emotionally lost, of those in life whom we miss knowing through circumstances of fate and through their own design. But most of all, The Book Of Absent People is about knowing ourselves - a book that will linger in the heart for days to come.