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Die Goldenen Jahre
Alis Leben ist ein Tanz auf dem Vulkan. Mit seinen Freunden bewohnt er ein leerstehendes Fabrikgebäude in Brooklyn. Sie feiern gemeinsam, teilen sich Drogen und Frauen und vor allem machen sie zusammen Musik. Aber Ali, der ein paar Jahre älter ist als die anderen, weiß, dass das für ihn nicht alles sein kann. Er weiß, was Liebe ist - und was es heißt, sie wieder zu verlieren. Und er weiß, dass ihn schon die Emigration aus dem Iran, als er noch ein Kind war, für immer für ein bürgerliches Leben verdorben hat. Er beginnt zu schreiben, um herauszufinden, worum genau er eigentlich trauert.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2015
18 people are currently reading
414 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
July 3, 2017
I picked this up in a bookshop knowing very little about it and struggled to research it after the purchase.
Ali Eskandarian was murdered alongside two members of The Yellow Dogs in 2013. Just before his murder he was preparing this book to be released.
Golden Years is a 21st century Beat novel. I'm not going to explain how because the answer is pretty obvious when you think of the subject matter of any Beat writer. The hope and youth in this novel is bittersweet when you know the awful fate of the author.
There's a lot of sex in this novel and I rolled my eyes every time because I'm so done with misogynistic descriptions of women and them being a symbol of pleasure.
I found the political undertones and overtones in this novel interesting and what it is like to be an Iranian-American. There's a section about the 2008 presidential campaign and you know it's about Obama but it does not explicitly state that.
Near the end of the novel the tense shifts and that writing was a world away from the simplistic sentences before (not like that is a bad thing). I would've loved to see more of that poetic, philosophical language that was present at the end.
Ali Eskandarian was murdered alongside two members of The Yellow Dogs in 2013. Just before his murder he was preparing this book to be released.
Golden Years is a 21st century Beat novel. I'm not going to explain how because the answer is pretty obvious when you think of the subject matter of any Beat writer. The hope and youth in this novel is bittersweet when you know the awful fate of the author.
There's a lot of sex in this novel and I rolled my eyes every time because I'm so done with misogynistic descriptions of women and them being a symbol of pleasure.
I found the political undertones and overtones in this novel interesting and what it is like to be an Iranian-American. There's a section about the 2008 presidential campaign and you know it's about Obama but it does not explicitly state that.
Near the end of the novel the tense shifts and that writing was a world away from the simplistic sentences before (not like that is a bad thing). I would've loved to see more of that poetic, philosophical language that was present at the end.
November 7, 2020
I picked up this book in a store just because the author seemed out of the usual regions I am reading about. When I discovered he is actually Iranian, I was super happy, as I am very fond of all Persian culture. However, his Persian heritage got so mixed up with the American one, that Ali ended up being dragged between two worlds, one of philosophy and deep meanings in life and one of drugs and sex and rock'n'roll. To be honest, I did not read Jack Kerouac, but after reading this I think I should, as it seems to be a nice tribute to ”The Road”. Anyway, I enjoyed the writing, it's very raw, I could feel that Ali was kinda writing a diary of his experiences and reflecting on the go to his life. I tried listening to his music too, it's a bit too underground rock for me, but still I recommend it as a background for his experiences. It's a bildungsroman, without reaching the final building point of life.
July 10, 2019
4 días, y 206 páginas después. El primer libro que leo del autor, y lo conocí por el curso de novelas de rock que estoy tomando. Siempre es recomendable leer un libro con la playlist adecuada, o en este caso con la playlist del autor.
La vida, obra y muerte del cantante Ali Eskandarian, un inmigrante iraní que recorre gran parte de Estados Unidos intentando sobrevivir y hacerse un espacio en el ambito músical estadounidense.
Mujeres, drogas, música, carreteras, el intento de conseguir la fama, y ninguna forma de lograr de escapar del destino.
Un personaje inmigrante encasillado y enjaulado en un mundo al que no pertenecía, grandes aspiraciones, pocas oportunidades. Un reflejo de lo que pertenecemos, de lo que queremos, de lo que no podemos ser. Él es la representación de todas nuestras ilusiones no materializadas.
Con una prosa de ficción de transgresora, similar a En el camino, se presenta esta joya infravalorada e inconexa, que del autor de seguir viviendo hubiera logrado grandes cosas.
Una tragedia que se adornó de música.
La vida, obra y muerte del cantante Ali Eskandarian, un inmigrante iraní que recorre gran parte de Estados Unidos intentando sobrevivir y hacerse un espacio en el ambito músical estadounidense.
Mujeres, drogas, música, carreteras, el intento de conseguir la fama, y ninguna forma de lograr de escapar del destino.
Un personaje inmigrante encasillado y enjaulado en un mundo al que no pertenecía, grandes aspiraciones, pocas oportunidades. Un reflejo de lo que pertenecemos, de lo que queremos, de lo que no podemos ser. Él es la representación de todas nuestras ilusiones no materializadas.
Con una prosa de ficción de transgresora, similar a En el camino, se presenta esta joya infravalorada e inconexa, que del autor de seguir viviendo hubiera logrado grandes cosas.
Una tragedia que se adornó de música.
May 19, 2017
Hayata 2013'te trajik bir şekilde erken veda eden müzisyen Ali Eskenderian'ın (sonsöz kısmında yazarın hayat hikayesine değiniliyor), ölümünden hemen önce tamamladığı ilk ve tek romanı Altın Yıllar benim için hoş bir sürpriz oldu. Otobiyografik olduğu anlaşılıyor; seks, uyuşturucu, rock, parasızlık ve düzenin dişlerinin bir parçası olmama mücadelesiyle dolu modern bir Beat romanı. Dolayısıyla o müthiş "Yolda"nın yazarı Kerouac'ı sevenlere ayrıca hitap edebilir. Başlarda, özellikle "kolay" seks maceraları biraz itici, abartılı gelse de, sonra kitabın genel havası bu çekinceleri gideriyor. Başkahraman ve ev arkadaşlarının İran göçmeni genç müzisyenler olması, İran devrimi sonrası yaşanan savaş ve sosyal çalkantılara da yer yer ama klişeleşmeden değinilmesini sağlamış. Şiirsel ve tarihsel değinmeler içeren, meditasyon vari kısa metinler de ilave zenginlik kazandırmış esere.
November 24, 2017
Totally conflicted! Utter male arrogance and incredibly misogynistic novel. But as the author was murdered, how much was due to the editor Oscar van Gelderen?
Guess no one will ever know?
Basically a very well written and prose overloaded novel but hideously anti women novel.
Only wish I knew what happened and why? But currently very little sympathy with the author and editor!
Guess no one will ever know?
Basically a very well written and prose overloaded novel but hideously anti women novel.
Only wish I knew what happened and why? But currently very little sympathy with the author and editor!
July 6, 2019
"Tú perteneces al tierra y lo divino está en tu interior, igual que en todos los demás. O sea que no temas, perdónate a ti mismo, sigue siendo un loco. La luz no está al final del túnel, sino en todas partes, esperando."
Con un estilo similar a los míticos viajes de Kerouac por la carretera, Eskandarian habla sobre sus años dorados en la ciudad de Nueva York, intentando vivir de su mayor pasión: la música.
A través de esta crónica podemos leer desde su juventud como un niño refugiado en Alemania, sus primeros viajes por las carreteras norteamericanas en busca del Sueño Americano, sus amores y desamores entre noches llenas de sexo, drogas y modelos, pero sobre todo como cada acción que el describe entre estas páginas está siempre influenciada por su sueño de hacer y ser música.
Una novela de juventud, vida y sobre todo, pasión.
Con un estilo similar a los míticos viajes de Kerouac por la carretera, Eskandarian habla sobre sus años dorados en la ciudad de Nueva York, intentando vivir de su mayor pasión: la música.
A través de esta crónica podemos leer desde su juventud como un niño refugiado en Alemania, sus primeros viajes por las carreteras norteamericanas en busca del Sueño Americano, sus amores y desamores entre noches llenas de sexo, drogas y modelos, pero sobre todo como cada acción que el describe entre estas páginas está siempre influenciada por su sueño de hacer y ser música.
Una novela de juventud, vida y sobre todo, pasión.
May 15, 2025
takie 2,5 gwiazdki, miala swoje momenty ale pol ksiazki to jakies wtorne srutu tutu
August 27, 2016
While I'm inclined to like beat novels anyway, this one stuck out to me for it's refreshing honesty in responsibility. Ali's continual reminders that he chooses this path are self-aware and bring modernity to a novel that might otherwise be too much On The Road for the 21st century.
July 2, 2024
Gets better the more you read and there are glimpses into what this book could have been with proper editing and time but, as it is, it feels super outdated and way too sexist to be a book written in the 2000s tbh.
September 10, 2016
This book is very much in the style of the classic beat novels - as to be expected, the plot is episodic and a bit meandering but the author's strong voice elevates the work overall.
November 30, 2022
Sexist. Waste of money
January 19, 2026
I finished Golden Years recently, and it has stayed with me ever since. Afterward, I read others’ reflections here, and it was really interesting to see how differently the book has been perceived by each reader.
I come from the same country and culture as Ali. I picked up this book knowing the tragic fate of Yellow Dogs, and because I was already obsessed with Ali’s voice, the rare honesty we are still lucky to witness. (Black and Blue remains my personal favorite.) Loving him as a musician and wanting to understand him more fully, I opened this book, and connected instantly.
There is a moment early on, when he introduces the loft and the people in it, and mentions that only a few hours after the kids’ arrival to the loft, “they already had the look of free men.” That line stayed with me. Because that is what this book is really about: the slow, and intoxicating exploration of becoming free. Like Ali and the kids in the loft, I am also an immigrant, and I feel that.
“Get up, put your pants on and leave, I command you. The world is your rightful home and you are free to roam, free to walk upon it.”
Freedom here is not simple or clean, it is chaotic, unfinished, sometimes ugly. Ali writes exactly as he lives: in bursts, fragments, impulses. A beat-style honesty that allows thoughts to arrive unfiltered. I don’t read his early opinions as misogynistic so much as the voice of a free man, high, restless, hungry, and deeply lonely sometimes. And as the book moves forward, especially through his relationship with Alison, that voice shifts, softens, evolves.
His commitment to the beat style is not just aesthetic, it is philosophical. As he himself writes:
“The important things to remember are the simple things, the little things, the here and now things, the small words, slight differences in tone and attitude, pressure changes, pitch changes, what the eyes say, what the mouth doesn’t say…”
And that is precisely what he does in this book: he collects moments, sensations, fragments of consciousness, and hands them to us unpolished but alive.
I don’t live his lifestyle. But the existential crisis he moves through felt painfully familiar:
“There isn’t a drug in the world that can cure my ills. All change must come from within but my insides feel rotten and disturbed.”
There is something heartbreaking in how aware he is of his own unrest, and how limited language feels in trying to express it:
“There is so much I wish to convey to the people around me, some inner significance that I grasp with every fiber of my being, but cannot put into words.”
And yet, somehow, through this book and through his music, he does convey it.
Coming from a different generation but the same country, I felt a deep recognition in the shared trauma he describes, especially when he writes about war, and the act of leaving:
“A lot of my contemporaries have witnessed the same things but have chosen to forget. I can’t forget and can’t self-medicate enough, and not even a lobotomy will suffice.”
“A child can never understand war. Why then should a grown-up? A child understands only too soon what kind of a world he or she has entered…”
There is something unmistakably Persian in the way these thoughts are internalized, philosophized, carried quietly but heavily.
Death is present from the very beginning of this book, haunting, inevitable, almost conversational:
“No sense in shriveling up and dying, death will come soon enough all by itself, don’t you worry.”
Knowing how soon his life would end makes these lines unbearable in retrospect:
“Doors are closing faster than before, all is becoming dark, and I am dying again.”
There is even a moment where fate feels eerily written into the text itself:
“‘The human condition, my man. People are just going to be killing each other one way or another.’” Oh my poor Ali. It feels, at times, as though you were already narrating your own ending.
And yet, threaded through the darkness, there are lines of astonishing depth, ancient, timeless, almost mythic:
“I have to be what I am. I know I’ve been here before and written things down on papyrus and parchment…” It feels as though he is speaking not just as a man, but as a continuation of memory itself.
I finished this book with a heavy heart, thinking how easily we might have been friends in another life.
“The dandelions in spring sure do look defeated and worn.”
But not you, Ali. You stayed young. You stayed searching. You stayed free ♡
I come from the same country and culture as Ali. I picked up this book knowing the tragic fate of Yellow Dogs, and because I was already obsessed with Ali’s voice, the rare honesty we are still lucky to witness. (Black and Blue remains my personal favorite.) Loving him as a musician and wanting to understand him more fully, I opened this book, and connected instantly.
There is a moment early on, when he introduces the loft and the people in it, and mentions that only a few hours after the kids’ arrival to the loft, “they already had the look of free men.” That line stayed with me. Because that is what this book is really about: the slow, and intoxicating exploration of becoming free. Like Ali and the kids in the loft, I am also an immigrant, and I feel that.
“Get up, put your pants on and leave, I command you. The world is your rightful home and you are free to roam, free to walk upon it.”
Freedom here is not simple or clean, it is chaotic, unfinished, sometimes ugly. Ali writes exactly as he lives: in bursts, fragments, impulses. A beat-style honesty that allows thoughts to arrive unfiltered. I don’t read his early opinions as misogynistic so much as the voice of a free man, high, restless, hungry, and deeply lonely sometimes. And as the book moves forward, especially through his relationship with Alison, that voice shifts, softens, evolves.
His commitment to the beat style is not just aesthetic, it is philosophical. As he himself writes:
“The important things to remember are the simple things, the little things, the here and now things, the small words, slight differences in tone and attitude, pressure changes, pitch changes, what the eyes say, what the mouth doesn’t say…”
And that is precisely what he does in this book: he collects moments, sensations, fragments of consciousness, and hands them to us unpolished but alive.
I don’t live his lifestyle. But the existential crisis he moves through felt painfully familiar:
“There isn’t a drug in the world that can cure my ills. All change must come from within but my insides feel rotten and disturbed.”
There is something heartbreaking in how aware he is of his own unrest, and how limited language feels in trying to express it:
“There is so much I wish to convey to the people around me, some inner significance that I grasp with every fiber of my being, but cannot put into words.”
And yet, somehow, through this book and through his music, he does convey it.
Coming from a different generation but the same country, I felt a deep recognition in the shared trauma he describes, especially when he writes about war, and the act of leaving:
“A lot of my contemporaries have witnessed the same things but have chosen to forget. I can’t forget and can’t self-medicate enough, and not even a lobotomy will suffice.”
“A child can never understand war. Why then should a grown-up? A child understands only too soon what kind of a world he or she has entered…”
There is something unmistakably Persian in the way these thoughts are internalized, philosophized, carried quietly but heavily.
Death is present from the very beginning of this book, haunting, inevitable, almost conversational:
“No sense in shriveling up and dying, death will come soon enough all by itself, don’t you worry.”
Knowing how soon his life would end makes these lines unbearable in retrospect:
“Doors are closing faster than before, all is becoming dark, and I am dying again.”
There is even a moment where fate feels eerily written into the text itself:
“‘The human condition, my man. People are just going to be killing each other one way or another.’” Oh my poor Ali. It feels, at times, as though you were already narrating your own ending.
And yet, threaded through the darkness, there are lines of astonishing depth, ancient, timeless, almost mythic:
“I have to be what I am. I know I’ve been here before and written things down on papyrus and parchment…” It feels as though he is speaking not just as a man, but as a continuation of memory itself.
I finished this book with a heavy heart, thinking how easily we might have been friends in another life.
“The dandelions in spring sure do look defeated and worn.”
But not you, Ali. You stayed young. You stayed searching. You stayed free ♡
October 12, 2020
Mucho sexo, mucho exilio y poco rock ‘n Roll.
Creo que en toda la novela se mencionan, con suerte, 5 artistas. No se habla de géneros, ni de canciones más que como cosas sin importancia. Eso me da bronca. No se qué canciones hacía Ali, como su herencia se mezclaba con Nueva York, ni que clase de música le gusta.
Ah, menciona Berlín, de Lou Reed.
Una narración diezmada, con fuerte anclaje en el movimiento, que es doble: del que se exilia y del que viaja. Creo que ahí hay algo interesante. Es un Kerouac de la diáspora.
La trama es más bien sencilla: mujeres distintas en ciudades distintas. La narración se articula con esos 2 ejes. El resto parece accesorio. Los amigos cambian de piel, las drogas son unas u otras, el trabajo puede ser cualquier cosa.
Por momentos, una voz en cursiva se vuelve poética/introspectiva/mística. No se si fue decisión del autor o el editor pero es un gesto que remarca un linaje de Medio Oriente, una voz ancestral. Por momentos está buena, por otros me agotó.
Así y todo tiene una voz potente y original.
No se si es lo que los editores te quieren hacer creer. Don’t believe the hype.
Creo que en toda la novela se mencionan, con suerte, 5 artistas. No se habla de géneros, ni de canciones más que como cosas sin importancia. Eso me da bronca. No se qué canciones hacía Ali, como su herencia se mezclaba con Nueva York, ni que clase de música le gusta.
Ah, menciona Berlín, de Lou Reed.
Una narración diezmada, con fuerte anclaje en el movimiento, que es doble: del que se exilia y del que viaja. Creo que ahí hay algo interesante. Es un Kerouac de la diáspora.
La trama es más bien sencilla: mujeres distintas en ciudades distintas. La narración se articula con esos 2 ejes. El resto parece accesorio. Los amigos cambian de piel, las drogas son unas u otras, el trabajo puede ser cualquier cosa.
Por momentos, una voz en cursiva se vuelve poética/introspectiva/mística. No se si fue decisión del autor o el editor pero es un gesto que remarca un linaje de Medio Oriente, una voz ancestral. Por momentos está buena, por otros me agotó.
Así y todo tiene una voz potente y original.
No se si es lo que los editores te quieren hacer creer. Don’t believe the hype.
April 10, 2018
Auténtico ejercicio de introspección que aborda interesantísimas reflexiones de corte existencialista porque, como el mismo autor describió en una carta que dirigió a su editor, la novela habla de un inmigrante iraní como él, hijo de la guerra, roquero y artista que intenta adaptarse a la vida occidental, capitalista, que encuentra exasperante y al mismo tiempo fascinante, criticándola sin tapujos, describiéndola con toda su crudeza y elocuencia, sin censuras. El mismo Eskandarian, asesinado en Nueva York en 2013 junto a algunos de sus colegas, definió la obra como la gran novela iraní-americana, portadora de un sesgo políticamente contestatario y montones de sexo, drogas y rock and roll. Pero son precisamente esos montones de sexo, drogas y rock and roll lo que a mí se me antoja como lo más anecdótico y frívolo de la novela y del personaje principal, que como Eskandarian, esconde un profundo espíritu romántico, impregnado de un envidiable bagaje cultural y un sorprendente positivismo final.
May 26, 2025
Esperaba algo diferente antes de arrancarlo, pensé que iba a ser más una novela Iraní, que una novela americana con un personaje iraní como principal, pero que a grandes efectos, este detalle iba a ser irrelevante.
La disfruté, se me hizo entretenida y a la vez tiene su peso trágico esa espiral de decadencia y autodestrucción en la que el personaje se ve envuelto. Por otro lado, como toda buena novela sobre rockeros desbundados está repleta de sexo y drogas, como es de esperarse, y estas se materializan en una misoginia constante que permea la obra en su totalidad. Puede joderte o no, eso ya es un tema más personal, pero está ahí y de a momentos se hace excesivo, al menos desde mi perspectiva.
Una novela trágica, que se vuelve peor aún si uno sabe que el autor murió asesinado poco antes de que la obra saliera a la luz.
La disfruté, se me hizo entretenida y a la vez tiene su peso trágico esa espiral de decadencia y autodestrucción en la que el personaje se ve envuelto. Por otro lado, como toda buena novela sobre rockeros desbundados está repleta de sexo y drogas, como es de esperarse, y estas se materializan en una misoginia constante que permea la obra en su totalidad. Puede joderte o no, eso ya es un tema más personal, pero está ahí y de a momentos se hace excesivo, al menos desde mi perspectiva.
Una novela trágica, que se vuelve peor aún si uno sabe que el autor murió asesinado poco antes de que la obra saliera a la luz.
December 31, 2017
Ja, das Buch klingt nach Kerouac, wie alle Rezensenten sagen.
Frauen haben das Buch manchmal schlecht bewertet, weil es arrogant und frauenfeindlich sei.
Kann man alles in dem Buch finden.
Ich fand:
Er versteht, dass ihm etwas fehlt. die Beziehung, die enge Verbundenheit mit einer Person. Er bedauert das Scheitern. Immer trauert er nach dem Ende einer Liebe. Große Zärtlichkeit für seine Freundinnen.
Er hat trotz der Kerouac-Anklänge einen eigenen Ton. Kurz bevor es zu klischeehaft wird, nimmt er eine andere inhaltliche und sprachliche Wendung.
Der Roman kreist um die Frage: Was ist eigentlich ein Künstler?
Wie kann ich als Künstler leben und auch meine Miete zahlen?
Drogen, um die Widersprüche auszuhalten.
Er wurde Opfer eines Amoklaufs.
Es gibt youtube-Videos von ihm.
(Tendenz geht in Richtung 4 Sterne. 3 1/2 gebe ich auf jeden Fall)
October 21, 2017
Not the kind of book I normally enjoy and as such I did struggle a bit to get through it, but I felt like putting it down early would be a disservice because of the story behind it. It certainly contained a lot of the stuff I dislike about Kerouac et al, but at least it was coherent and it was made infinitely more interesting and refreshing by the thread of Iranian immigrant experiences that ran through it.
September 7, 2025
Hay un lugar donde habitan los desterrados. Allí yace también el deseo de convertirse en algo más que un insípido ser humano. Dentro de los acordes de una guitarra se encuentra la esencia de un hombre libre que -en realidad- sólo abraza esa libertad en el ímpetu de su clímax; un clímax duro y turbulento.
June 9, 2017
Eskandarian has beautiful voice. The author's genuine telling of feelings we have all felt, sometimes unknowingly, is unsettling. Unsettling in just the kind of way that makes you want to search his words for greater meaning that may or may not exist. It is both uncomfortable and soothing.
July 6, 2017
No es un libro malo pero frases de la contraportada como un 'clásico de culto' le vienen muy grande. Historia correcta de joven músico entregado al desenfreno.
November 15, 2020
Es un buen libro para pasar el rato tiene algo de sexo, mucho de delirio y exilio se podrías decir pero poco rock excepto porque se trata de un músico. En fin un buen libro para pasar el rato.
Read
March 15, 2021Precum orice carte, are parti bune si parti rele. Autorul mi s-a parut talentat la scris, a fost si amuzant iar daca ar fi fost mai cenzurat cu singuranta ar fi iesit o carte mai buna.
August 7, 2021
Interesting book about a former Iranian refugee, trying to make it as an artist
January 15, 2022
Pongo la radio en una emisora de jazz. Qué clase de día será hoy? Vamos, almas ateas y paganas! Echemos una mano y sintámonos orgullosos de nuestra contribución a la destrucción del hombre!
June 13, 2022
Un libro con una narración muy fresca.
April 26, 2023
5/5*****.
June 5, 2023
Incredible, fucking incredible, he deserved so much better, this is fucking incredible. Read it.
April 21, 2025
Beautiful memory, may he RIP
January 17, 2025
Every single rock cliché possible is here. Meh
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews