The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

Part murder mystery and part family saga, this dramatic and often hilarious novel explores the history of Los Angeles’s Iranian Jewish community.

From Tehran to Los Angeles, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a sweeping saga that tells the story of the Soleymans, an Iranian Jewish family tormented for decades by Raphael's Son, a crafty and unscrupulous financier who has futilely claimed to be an heir to the family's fortune.

Forty years later in contemporary Los Angeles, Raphael's Son has nearly achieved his goal--until he suddenly disappears, presumed by many to have been murdered. The possible suspects are legion: his long-suffering wife; numerous members of the Soleyman clan exacting revenge; the scores of investors he bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme; or perhaps even his disgruntled bookkeeper and longtime confidant.

Award-winning novelist Gina B. Nahai pulls back the curtain on a close-knit community that survived centuries of persecution in Iran before settling and thriving in the United States, but now finds itself divided to the core by one of its own members. By turns hilarious and affecting, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. examines the eternal bonds of family and community, and the lasting scars of exile.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Jewish, Iran, Magical Realism, Middle East, Mystery

416 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2014

About the author

Gina B. Nahai is a best-selling author, and a professor of Creative Writing at USC. Her novels have been translated into 18 languages, and have been selected as “One of the Best Books of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. They have been finalists for the Orange Award, the IMPAC Award, and the Harold J. Ribalow Award. She is the winner of the Los Angeles Arts Council Award, the Persian Heritage Foundation’s Award, the Simon Rockower Award, and the Phi Kappa Phi Award. Her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Magazine, and Huffington Post. She writes a monthly column for the The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, for which she has been twice a finalist for an L.A. Press Club award.

Nahai’s first novel, Cry of the Peacock (Crown, 1992) told, for the first time in any Western language, the 3,000-year story of the Jewish people of Iran. It won the Los Angeles Arts Council Award for Fiction. Her second novel, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (Harcourt, 1999), was a finalist for the Orange Prize in England, the IMPAC award in Dublin, and the Harold J. Ribalow Award in the United States. A #1 L.A. Times bestseller, it was named as “One of the Best Books of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times. Her third novel, Sunday’s Silence (Harcourt, 2001), was also an L.A. Times bestseller and a “Best Book of the Year.” Her fourth novel, Caspian Rain was published in September ‘07, was also an L.A. Times bestseller, was named “One of the Best Books of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune, and won the Persian Heritage Foundation’s Award.

Nahai is a frequent lecturer on the contemporary politics of the Middle East, has been a guest on PBS, CNBC, as well as a number of local television and radio news programs, and has guest-hosted on NPR affiliate KCRW (The Politics of Culture). A judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards (Fiction, First Fiction), she has lectured at a number of conferences nationwide, and served on the boards of PEN Center USA West, The International Women’s Media Foundation, and B’nai Zion Western Region.

Nahai holds a BA and a Master’s degree in International Relations from UCLA, and an MFA in Creative Writing from USC. She lives in Los Angeles, where she’s at work on a new novel.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most often I am beginning to compose my review a third of the way into my reading of a book. But, this book thwarted every attempt, shape shifting with every turn of the page. It begins as a murder mystery but quickly becomes a family saga written with magical realism. It is a witty social commentary and a “Gatsby-esk” tale of self reinvention. It is a menagerie of quirky characters, a story of how the ties of affection can become a noose that hangs as easily as a lifeline that rescues, a promise of hope and so much more. The writing was quite good. I definitely want to read more by this author.

[☮Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A LibraryThing giveaway.

This is a saga spanning many decades, from Tehran under the Shah to present day L.A., where the characters have ended up. I wanted to read this partly for the murder mystery and partly for a little education on Iranian Jews. I got a lot of education on Iranian history, bits of mystery, and some magical realism, of which I'm NOT a fan. Although it felt very long, not to mention repetitive, it still held my interest if read in short sessions. Maybe that's why it took me two months, on and off, to read!

But I really enjoyed the last 50 pages or so, when multiple mysteries are solved. They could cut out at least 10 characters and 75 pages to make what I believe would be a much better story. Told in third person with very little dialog and going back and forth between time periods, it wasn't easy to know the many characters or feel emotionally involved until the ending when it's all summed up.

[Denice Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something I learned. There are Iranian Jews. I didn’t know that. And I didn’t know that when many, many, many of them left Iran when the Shah was deposed, they came to Los Angeles. Assimilation here is difficult for any immigrant but trying to fit into Los Angeles could be particularly difficult.

This is the story of the Soleymans family and when the story opens Raphael’s Son (yes, that is his name) is found dead in the front seat of his car, his throat slit, the car saturated with his blood. He is definitely dead. His wife finds him, goes into the house to call the police and upon her return finds the car empty. After forty years of tormenting the Iranian Jewish community both in Iran and Los Angeles, no one feels particularly sorry to hear Raphael’s Son is dead.

It’s the story of the Soleymans family that we learn as the investigation proceeds that’s so riveting. Raphael’s Son was cast off in Iran, his mother particularly horrible and who wouldn’t be told that Raphael’s Son wasn’t a true member of the Soleymans family. A family that never accepted him. Raphael’s son became a Bernie Madoff type who, in his hatred of all, ruins so very many lives in his Ponzi scheme.

There are so many suspects! And it’s their story that brings this all together into the story of the Iranian Jewish community. Their struggles to assimilate, their struggle to maintain what shaped their lives for thousands of years. There are the driven ones, and there are the ones who try to live as their customs at home guided their lives for thousands of years but find themselves not in Iran but in LA. There are the children, the next generation. And there are those who were professional doctors, lawyers, accountants at home but stocking grocery shelves here, lost in their own pain.

And this incredibly engaging, interesting, informative and gorgeously written story takes off from there. We see the Iran we didn’t know about. The one that’s not in the news . I wanted to read this every minute of the day but knew if I did I’d finish it and I didn’t want that to happen, either. So I kept reading, shaking my head at the author’s talent and after turning the last page just said, “wow.”

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure where I heard about Gina Nahai's novel, "The Luminous Heart of Jonah S", but I downloaded it yesterday and literally couldn't put it down til I finished today. The book, which is a mix of history and passion, with a bit of magical realism thrown in, is possibly the most beautiful and imaginative novel I've read in years. Set in Iran and Los Angeles, in the years from 1950 to 2013, the book is the story of the Soleyman family. Iranian Jews, they fled Teheren after the Shah's overthrow in 1979, going to the United States to reinvent themselves. But like many first and second generation immigrants, they brought their beliefs and prejudices with them, continuing their vendettas and crimes here in the United States.

The Soleymen family's fortune in Iran began with Izikiel-the-Red, born at the turn of the last century. He had two sons - Raphael and Aaron - who were his heirs. However, Raphael had medical problems - his heart gave off a glow, for instance - and so the fortune went to the younger son. Raphael fell in with a woman many years his senior, who claimed to be carrying their child, born 13 months after Raphael died. Their son, "Raphael's Son", he was referred to though no one trusted his widowed mother's claims, moved to Los Angeles and began a life of financial crimes in the Iranian-Jewish community. The other brother married Elizabeth, a brilliant woman with her own demons and bodily odor. Both brothers had two daughters.

Nahai looks at today's American Iranian-Jewish community with humor (some of the book is laugh-out-loud funny) and pathos. There is cheating and disrespect and deliberate crimes between various characters, but there is also love. Part of the love is a product of the magical realism with which Gina Nahai imbues her characters. I can't stress enough how lyrical Nahai's writing is. This book's been out since 2015 and I'm sorry I didn't discover it before. Her backlist is also impressive.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an advanced reading copy of this fine, richly wrought novel and feel fortunate that I did. Nahai weaves together seemingly disparate genres into a cohesive and eloquent whole as she traces the fortunes and misfortunes of the Soleymans, a Persian Jewish family that grew in prominence in pre-Revolutionary Iran only to become cultural curiosities after their immigration to Los Angeles in the '70s. We get elements of a sweeping family saga that covers several generations from the Soleyman's prestige-filled lives in the Tehran of the Shah through the terrors of escaping of post-Revolutionary Iran and, finally, the degradations and sacrifices of the Soleyman's rebuilding their lives in Los Angeles these last three decades. When a bad seed of the Soleyman clan--a sleazy Madoff-like investor--is found murdered one night, it sets off an investigation that Nahai uses to reveal the attitudes and lifestyles of the Persian gentry of today's Holmby Hills and Beverly Hills. The murder is also the catalyst for the rest of the narrative as we're taken back to the Tehran of decades ago to trace a very strange paternity fight between a scion of the Soleymans and a cunning, ruthless witch who claims to be the mother of a Soleyman heir; that fight has massive repercussions for the post-Revolution Soleyman survivors and their children as Nahai's narrative effortlessly cascades through time and from one reveal to another. Alternating between magical realism, cultural journalism, humorous satire, heartbreaking drama and, yes, a cunning murder mystery, Nahai paints a stunning mosaic of the Soleyman's scandalous and mystifying journey. It's hard to nail down exactly what makes Nahai's novel such a satisfying read because she's doing so much on every page; there isn't a stone unturned as every character gets his/her own back-story and, thereby, their own justifications and, in the end, we're left with a fabulously created and felt world, all of a piece yet with deep roots in the cultural realities of the Persian community of today. Awe-inspiring stuff.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I wrote this I had not finished this book. Now that I have I wish it had gone on forever. But my previous review in Amazon still rings true"May I say I am not yet finished but I have laughed out loud several times thus far, at the wryness of the humor. While I am not Iranian I have spent time with Iranians in Beverly Hills, Westwood and in Los Angeles, who escaped from the Revolution or who came a while before. I recognize these people - with all the bells and whistles, warts and strange behavior and I feel quite at home. Very much at home. Ms. Nahai is amazing. I see people who are very real to me and whose cultural idiosyncracies (as we all have them no matter where and what from) are divinely drawn in her prose. And I am Jewish and that resonates as well. I can also say that in some of her characters I saw Persians -regardless of faith and they too were very familiar as well. I am still engrossed in this book but you may want to get a copy NOW. I am not sure if it is magical realism or realistic magic - I don't think it matters either. Read it."

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gina B. Najai uses magical realism to create a multigenerational story of an Iranian Jewish family both in Iran and United States. I do not want to define magical realism but would rather you experience it. It begins as a murder mystery where almost everyone is a suspect because of the bad character of the victim. It creates the strange world of being Iranian and fitting more when the Shah was in power and being a easy target of hatred when he fell.

Fable, myth and tradition tell the story with rich detail. It is a story of greed, customs and culture that once worked in Iran but not in Los Angeles. It is the world where people who once had professional lives in Iran end up stocking grocery store shelves because of the inability to qualify professionally in a strange land.

This book is totally engrossing and one of the most fascinating parts was that with family prestige and tradition being so important in the Iranian Jewish community that it was still carried over and effected their lives so much when they settled in the United States. The family’s reputation was all important and without that you condemned to be lost. As with most immigrant groups, this group sought out those with the same language and culture and bonded together in sort of a defense against the outside. But this book goes into depth the whys and hows of this and brings about so much more understanding.

My only negative criticism is that there were a little too many characters to keep up with and I got a little lost at times. But this book as a whole was a feast of the customs, backgrounds and myths of the Iranian Jews.

I highly recommend reading it. If some of it seems a bit fantastic, just let yourself go and imagine the people with their strange luminescence and smells and enjoy!

I received this Advanced Reading Copy from the publishers as a win from FirstRead but the thoughts and feelings in my review are my own.

[Chana Billet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nahai does a great job raising the curtain on the American-Iranian Jewish community. She captures nuanced, spot-on details which only an insider can know. Nahai describes, lauds, reminiscences and pokes fun at Iranian culture, especially in comparison to its American counterpart. I love how she contrasts mourning rituals: "Theirs [the Iranian's] was, after all, a culture that measured a man's popularity by the amount of tears shed at his graveside...In the end, John Vain's funeral looked totally American--simple, rushed, poorly attended."

At times the novel is part-satire, part-reality, part-fantasy, part-comedy, part-social commentary, all of which made my head spin. Nahai jumps in tone as much as she jumps throughout time periods and characters, which makes the plot confusing. Only the most thoughtful readers will go back to reread portions of the beginning of the novel, so that the thickening plot will make sense, 300 pages later.

I did enjoy the book but overall, I felt that it could have been condensed by 1/3 and that focusing on one specific tone would have made the book more powerful.

The hallmark of a good author is to "show, not tell." Half the time I felt like Nahai was very descriptively telling us what was happening but not descriptively showing us.

But literary nit-picking aside, it's always a pleasure to read about the Jewish immigrant experience, especially from cultures which are marginalized, so in that regard, you can't go wrong with this book!

[Yenta Knows · Rating 2 out of 5]

I raced through this book to be ready for a book club meeting.

I may have had a different opinion if my read had been less pressured. But I tend to think I would not have completed the book at all.

I share the frustrations others have mentioned: there were too many characters and too many plot lines. It was hard to keep track of everyone. The author tells when she should show.

Also: the characters do not develop. Raphael's wife is shrewish. Raphael's son is evil. Elizabeth is bright but cold. All of these characters start out this way and so remain to the very end, despite the changes in circumstance each experiences.

A final complaint. The shah modernized Iran, surely a good thing. But he was also a brutal dictator who used torture and murder to stifle opposition. The narrator and her characters ignore the politics that engendered their exile.

[Carol Catinari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually a 3.5-4 rating. An interesting and well written story of a family of Iranian Jews. The story takes place at first in Iran, and then in Los Angeles after the fall of the Shah. The story is an engaging read, one where you become immersed in the tale and enjoy picking the book up each time (although for me, it wasn't a compelling read, more of an enjoying the immersion). There are elements of the "unreal" and this adds to the charm of the book. At times, I lost track of some of the characters, but they manage to appear and reappear and support the tale to its end. The chapters are short, and the author is an amazing "hook" writer. As soon as you finish one chapter, you need to start the next.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 3 1/2 star book - a fascinating, compelling read about a family of Iranian Jews from their life in Iran in the 1950s to their exile and emigration to Los Angeles. Their immigrant experience was very different from other Jewish groups so it was really interesting to read about. But there were a lot of characters and back stories to keep track of and I didn't really feel like I ever came to fully understand the main female characters. It would be interesting to discuss but I'm not sure it will quite make the cut for my book clubs this year.

[J.J. Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait for this to come out so I can share it with people in my life. It's an utterly enchanting and enrapturing book that shed so much light on a world I've never understood and the universal truths of a life lived with intent. I could not put it down once I began and felt like I ended it as a person who knew and understood so much more. I vigorously recommend this book. I'm so excited to be able to gift it.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read and enjoyed an earlier work by Gina Nahai. This one, I'm afraid, seems rather limp. I suppose it is what is known as "magical realism"--which I think Nancy Pearl calls "elastic fiction?" Not Latin America, though, but the Iranian Jewish community--in Iran and then in LA. Those are clearly worlds that the author knows well but it's just all sitting there rather like a lump. Nothing (to me) gives it life or spark. it should be a better book than it is, I'm afraid. SO I gave up.

[The Jewish Book Council]

Review by Esther Nussbaum for the Jewish Book Council.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely an author I can read over and over.

[Zoe Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes when I write reviews on my magic realism blog I have to make a case for or against the book in question being magic realism. This is not the case here. This is magic realism in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. I was reminded of Isabel Allende's House of Spirits, with an upper-class woman persecuted by a man whose mind is twisted by hatred of the family that rejected his claims. The magic is however more obvious than Allende's: every decade or so, a child - ususally a boy in the family - was born with a glowing heart. Nahai's description of Raphael sleepwalking through the streets - the light from his heart attracting every moth and firefly and nocturnal bird in the city, plus an entire horde of restless insomniac ghosts - seems closer to the magic of Marquez' Macondo. Gina B. Nahai has however a strong and individual style of her own.

For starters there is the use of the murder mystery genre as a frame for the family saga. This works really well, providing an external observer in the form of the police detective (also an Iranian Jew) and using this most American of genres to contrast with the more magical and mythical world of pre-revolutionary Iran. Nahai is excellent at portraying both of these very different worlds. She does not romanticize the world of the last Shah. She shows how unjust it was and how corrupt. Raphael's Son's abuse of others and corruption is learned during a childhood full of impotent anger. Both in Iran and in America there is money to be made at the expense of people who naively believe that justice will prevail above the interests of those with power and money. This is a lesson Raphael's Son learns from the lips of the head of the Soleyman family: No matter what you may want or how badly - you must understand that in this country, at this time, you and your kind don't hold a prayer against the likes of me.

The other strong character in the book is Elizabeth Soleyman, who is innocent of any wrong done by the Soleymans to Raphael's Son and his mother, but who becomes the focus of Raphael's Son's campaign of hatred. Her experiences include the loss of all but one of her family, ruination and exile, and yet she survives. But rather than just show this as a simple triumph, Nahai shows that what doesn't kill you will nevertheless leave its mark... Elizabeth learns to suppress her pain and longings, but in doing so seems cold to her daughter.

This book is not just a mystery story nor a family chronicle, but also a book about alienation. The Soleymans may be well-to-do when the story starts but they are Jews in the Shah's Iran. When they move to the US they are both Jews and Iranian. Nahai paints a moving picture of what it is to be forced into exile. She explains how the Iranian exiles (like others the world over) soon learn that the hardest part of being an exile is the vanishing - not of the self but of its likeness in the eyes of others. But for Elizabeth and her daughter the exile is doubly hard: they have to abandon the graves of the ones they lost... The dead and missing cannot cross borders; their exile is our forgetting.

Alienation is a recurrent theme in magic realism, closely linked to the other theme of dual cultures/worlds. This book could very easily have presented the worlds geographically. But Nahai is an altogether too subtle writer for that. There is harsh reality in Iran and there is magic (at the end of the book) in the US. She is quite simply a wonderful magic realism writer and worthy of the comparisons made at the beginning of this review.

I received this book free from the publisher via Edelweiss in return for a fair review.

This review first appeared on the Magic Realism Books Blog, where I review a magic realism book

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review appears in New York Journal of Books. Read that review first. Additional remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Jewish books: Gina Nahai's multi-genre Iranian-Jewish-American epic 5th novel

Some of our finest contemporary North American writers under the age of 60 immigrated to this continent as children and occupy a cultural middle ground between their countries of origin and the United States and Canada. Most contemporary Jewish North American immigrant writers were born in the various republics of the former Soviet Union, but some also came from the middle east, most notably Iran. Members of both immigrant communities can be found on both the east and west coasts, but the Russians tend to live in the northeast corridor, while the largest Iranian-Jewish community is in Los Angeles.

Iranian-Jewish-American writer Gina Nahai’s fifth novel, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. (published last month by Akashic Books), starts in Los Angeles but flashes back to Iran for the first third of the book, and then returns to Los Angeles while also mentioning Iranian Jewish communities in Long Island and Canada (without, however, mentioning Iranian Israelis who, though not fabulously wealthy, include a former president, cabinet ministers, and an IDF chief of staff). In my New York Journal of Books review I write, “the novel’s epic sweep, engaging prose, suspenseful plot, sense of humor, and introduction to a fascinating subculture outweigh its flaws.”

Before the Iranian revolution of 1979 upper middle class and wealthy Iranians were considered the most western-like middle easterners (though secular Turks might beg to differ), but in The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. we learn of such Iranian concepts as aabehroo, which “means making sure you do everything in compliance with society’s idea of what is right, that you live honorably and protect the sanctity of your family’s name and reputation.” Americans, by contrast, are far less conformist, and some of us are frankly shameless, though the same could be said of the novel’s Iranian-Jewish villain.

Nahai uses magical realism to represent middle eastern superstition and also reveals class and regional animosities within Iran’s Jewish community where wealthy and highly educated residents of Tehran viewed less affluent provincials with condescension. After fleeing revolutionary Iran with the clothes on their backs many of the upper class immigrants had to start over in this country from scratch. Some have subsequently risen to even greater heights while others have had to adjust to diminished circumstances.

The novel also presents the boundaries between pre-revolutionary Iran’s Jewish and Muslim communities as more porous than outsiders might have guessed. For a fuller discussion of The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. see my NYJB review.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gina B. Nahai’s first book in seven years, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. offers readers a unique insight into the Iranian Jewish community in a tale that spans several generations, a revolution, and two continents. Starting with a gruesome modern day murder in Los Angeles, the novel then jumps back to 1950s Tehran when a destructive feud first began between a Madoff-like villain and the Soleymans, a wealthy and well-respected family. It is a feud that lasts for decades, evolving and expanding as the years go by and resulting in murder, suicide, kidnapping, and general tragedy for everyone caught in its crossfire.

A lyrical and delightfully intricate book from start to finish, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a remarkable piece of storytelling that defies genre definition and narrative convention. Nahai masterfully combines the murder mystery narrative with the family saga narrative with the Iranian Jewish immigrant experience narrative, all while incorporating elements of magical realism that are beautifully fantastical yet still firmly grounded in a realistic narrative world.

Not satisfied stopping there, Nahai also weaves together the stories of this large cast of characters whose fates are forever intertwined, seamlessly jumping back and forth between time and place to create a complex narrative that is simultaneously cohesive and extremely engaging. Each character is exceptionally well developed, though the real standout of the story is Raphael’s Son. He is one of the most conflicting characters I’ve ever come across: repulsive and reprehensible in every way, and yet you can’t help but pity him as his story unfolds. You understand why he does the terrible things he does, and while you never quite get to the point where you forgive him, by the end you come to empathize with his plight.

A true pleasure to read, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is an absolutely stunning piece of literature and one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s a genuine page turner that I dare you to put down once you start. Two big thumbs up!

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This stunning saga of Iranian Jewish refugees in Los Angeles is one of the best books I have read this year.

The story concerns Raphael’s Son and his mother Raphael’s Wife (aka: The Black Bitch of Bushehr). She is the widow of a son of the wealthy, influential Soleyman family. The family rejects her claim that her son is an heir to the family; in fact, they don’t even believe that he is her son. She makes a spectacle of herself and her son by continuously banging on gates, screaming curses, and claiming to cast spells on the family and the estate in which they live.

There are a series of tragedies, strange natural (or unnatural) phenomena, deaths, and changes of fortune that may (or may not) be mayhem caused by Raphael’s Wife. When the Islamic Revolutionaries take over the government Elizabeth (who has married into the Soleyman family) and her young daughter are the only family members left to escape. They flee to Los Angeles, nearly penniless, and must accept aid from others in the refugee community.

Raphael’s Son stays in Tehran making money by swindling the families of jailed enemies of the Revolution. Eventually he has to leave. He goes to Los Angeles swearing vengeance on the family that shunned him for so many years. His vengeance is terrible, but hollow. He never achieves the status and respect he hoped for, his Ponzi scheme topples, and he comes to a grisly end. There is a police investigation and we meet more colorful characters.

This is a story of rejection, revenge, and a kind of redemption, told with passion, compassion, a lot of wit, wisdom, and a touch of magical realism. Gina Nahai is from the Iranian Jewish community of Los Angeles--her family left Tehran shortly before the Revolution when she was a teenager.

The copy I read was from my local public library.

[Danni · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Luminous Heart of Jonah S is a tale to be savored. This novel follows the Iranian Jewish family and their immigration to California. Along the way the author weaves mystical notes, biblical betrayals, and poignant love stories into a beautiful story.
Every character has a rich background that is introduced to readers at exactly the right time, albeit sometimes in a round about way. The connections between the family members is never straight forward lending a subtle taste of mystery to the novel. I especially loved Elizabeth, an independent woman who carries the smell of the sea with her where ever she goes. It was amazing to contrast the way Elizabeth handle hardships with the way her nephew(?), Raphael's Son, did. Many authors would try to make this contrast into a lesson. Instead, there is no judgement placed on either approach to dealing with life by the author. One could certainly argue that the lesson is to be gracious, persistent, and generous, but that isn't the point of the story. Both sides of the family win and loose important things. Ultimately, the family line continues together. That is the important thing.
I don't want to spoil the novel by giving to many details out. The novel does a splendid job of revealing all the details and connections at the perfect pace. It's like the perfect stripe tease till the end!
I think this is a wonderful novel and highly recommend it.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to librarything.com for sending me an advanced copy of The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. by Gina Nahai in return for my honest review.

The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is the first book that I have read by Gina B. Nahai, but I assure you that it will not be my last. Initially, I was hesitant about reading this novel. The title was peculiar and the cover art seemed almost post apocalyptic. But, what a wonderful, unexpected surprise!

It is a beautifully written family saga alternating between present day Los Angeles and Tehran 1950(s). The novel begins with a presumed murder of a despicable man, Raphael's son, who seemingly disappeared from his car after being sliced from neck to stomach by some unknown assailant. He had many enemies due to fall-out from a Ponzi scheme that defrauded the targeted Iranian community. Investors lost most, if not, all of their money while Raphael's son became incredibly wealthy. He manipulated the legal system and hid his illegally obtained funds making it impossible to uncover. There were reasons why Raphael's son acted the way he did, but the reader hated him regardless.

The book read like interconnected stories. The short chapters advanced the story quickly and helped to take comprehensive subject matter and make it easy to read and understand. The characters were interesting and well developed. The book was engaging throughout. 4 1/2 stars.

[Lori Tatar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. by Gina B. Nahai, which was provided to me by Goodreads, and wondered what the biggest take-away was. Maybe, it is that we all have our histories and our fates; maybe that we are all people and no matter how different, we all have the same need for community and validation. I want to say that on some level, we are all misfits within our own societies, but that seems to take away from the plight of the most recent immigrants, and especially to the Iranian Jews of whom the author writes.

I enjoyed the story. Period. I don't know if the author intended for there to be a moral or not. It was something I enjoyed and found interesting, layer upon layer of the Soleyman family and their subjugation to the hatred of Raphael's Son and his mother. The story is part fairy tale, part suspense, but mostly a narration of what is simply put as the human condition - maybe with a bit more flair than what most of us experience. The story is filled with tragedy, but hope, too.

Gina B. Nahai takes you into a family that you'll never know, but you'll recognize the people in it, including maybe yourself. She has captured the secret desires and motives that we don't dare speak of and has given us all a most luminous novel.

[Mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

:The Luminous Heart of Jonah S." is an incrediby brilliant and exciting novel! The characters are fascinating and the spiritual tale it tells is full of compassion and love, as well as revelations of narrow, selfish, and greedy behavior. The social reporting is fascinating, and even more fascinating is Nahai's amazing control of the twists and turns of her plot. Everything fits, everything follows, for it is a character driven novel--yet everything also surprises. The author has an intimate yet objective grasp of the behavior of Iranian Jews in Iran and in the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, and she interweaves her characters' fates so that a high morality and compassion is achieved. The narrator's voice is many-faceted: observant, ironic, compassionate...reminding me of Dostoevski's intimate narrator in "The Brothers K." It's a voice you trust, full of social revelation and humor and pathos. At the same time, it has the heavenly eye view, like Dostoevski's, of ultimate, complete compassion. I recommend this book for its depth and its breadth, for its laser observations and its heart.
Gina Nahai's presents a luminous book, illumined by history and morality, and a very large, forgiving spirit of understanding.

[Avni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gina Nahai is an imaginative writer. Her sentences are lyrical and full of fantasy, but her characters are heartbreaking, grounded in challenging--and often devastating--realities.

This book covers a lot of ground, taking us from a tumultuous time in Iran to modern-day Los Angeles, where our characters are trying to balance pride and ambition within the confines of starting again and all the obstacles this presents. The story begins with an unsolved crime, but it becomes besides the point. What happens is a consequence of the many and separate paths taken--at home and in foreign lands--in a path to have it all. It is a familiar immigrant story in this way, one not just about what is left behind, but about how hard it is to sustain the self you once were in these new circumstances.

At times, I had a little difficulty keeping up with the many characters introduced. It is both a positive and negative. I enjoyed going--even briefly--into the lives and heads of so many, but at times found it distracting from the main thread.

[Cassandra. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction is my favorite read! I received an advanced reading copy in exchange for my review. The idea of a book written about Iranian Jews was the reason I put my name on the list. The two things just did not go together.
This is a very well written book. The characters are well developed even if I had difficulty "clicking" with them. I really have no frame of reference. The story was difficult to get into in the beginning. However, as I began to sort out the magic & see it in the context of time, place, cultural/religious mysticism & belief the story was addicting.
Following members of a powerful Jewish family from their successful lives in Iran to their political/financial ruin & their exile to America was fascinating.
The novel is told in flashbacks & a few times I had to go back a couple of chapters to refresh the characters. This is not a fast read, but definately a Good Read.

[Elizabeth K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was just lovely, a family saga (THE BEST KIND OF BOOK) about Iranian Jews, with the action flipping from pre-revolution Tehran and current day L.A. There was a bit of a magical realism element, in pretty much the amount that I like it -- it's there, but not in your face. You could probably choose to read this book straight and decide that all the magical realism parts are just hyperbole. The writing was lovely (although too many mistakes in the e version made it past the editor) overall.

I was surprised, maybe, not quite disappointed, that the end was ... like the rest of the book, only the end. I was hopeful that there would be more of a punch, like a real peak? Not so much. But still, a solid ending to a solid story, so no real complaints there.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating, and a great insight into Iranian Jewish family history. It is fiction, but it very well could have been the truth. If I were to compare this to another novel, it would be Isabel Allende's La Casa de Los Espiritus, The House of the Spirits. Nahai writes this book as a contrast between the materialistic reality of LA, USA, and the magical realism of tradition and history in Iran. There are many parts of this novel that speak to you, especially if you are also an immigrant or a first generation American, speak of feelings and longing and loss of a part of you when you adapt to a new culture. This book was very enjoyable, even if it is something that I would have never picked to read for myself. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an Early Reviewers win from Library Thing.

The author of this book is a very skilled writer, and the writing is what kept me reading. I did learn a few things, as I knew almost nothing about Iranian Jews. This story begins in Iran, and then continues in Los Angeles, where apparently many Iranian Jews now live. There are so many characters, and I had trouble keeping them straight. I kept hoping I would feel more engaged with some of the characters, and while I did feel some sympathy for the main characters, and dislike for others, I couldn't care a whole lot for what was happening.

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Should be 3.5 stars. I liked this book; it wasn't perfect (in fact, it's sorely in need of a copy editor in a few places) but it's enjoyable if you like a little magical realism thrown in with your cultural commentary. It's occasionally a little difficult to follow all the generations of this extended Iranian Jewish family, especially since the narrative is told in a series of flashbacks that gradually catch up to the present day. Worth reading just to learn a little bit about how Iran's Jewish population fared under and after the shah, and the ways in which Persian Jews fared differently than their Ashkenazi counterparts when they came to the US.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Didn't really enjoy this book. Seemed confused as to what type of book wanted to be. Immigrants experience, mysticism/fantastical elements (glowing stomachs?), Persian rutiuals, etc.

Hated basically every character. Nearly a one had any redeemable qualities and one that didbwent to jail while others who were all rather distasteful not only survived but succeeded.

Also review of book made me think would be lighter look at LA Persian culture ala "Shahs of Sunset" on bravo tv and this definitely was not that! Would not recommend to anyone.