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The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree
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May 2020 - The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree
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This month, to celebrate the International Booker Prize shortlist, we are reading the only translated work to ever make a Stella Prize list. Shokoofeh Azar's The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a firm Stella nerd fave, and was recommended to me last year by our lovely Sue Dodds - this was the first book she and I connected over. It was recently shortlisted for the Booker International Prize, and the winner for that will be announced later in May.
This extraordinary debut novel recalls many of the elements of consummate story-telling associated with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, along with Azar’s own countrywomen, Porochista Khakhpour and Banafsheh Serov. The story is fresh, original and incandescent in its handling of the impact of the Islamic Revolution on the lives of the ordinary citizens of Iran and in its weaving together of Persian folklore and magic realism. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree chronicles the lives of five people in a single family as they come to terms with the loss of a son and a daughter, while the country they know and love becomes increasingly hostile and unbearable.
From the Stella Prize - 2018 Shortlist:
This book is an extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people. Azar is the consummate storyteller, using the panoply of Persian mythical and mystical entities to bring life, humour, hope, resignation, and profound insights to the characters and their world.
From International Booker Prize - 2020 Shortlist
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of the world through the ritual of storytelling. Through her unforgettable characters and glittering magical realist style, Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shokoofeh Azar was born in Iran 7 years before Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution changed the country forever. She inherited a love for literature from her parents and worked as a journalist and short story writer for several years. She was imprisoned for her work and feared for her life if she continued to stay there. Forced to flee Iran in 2010, Azar was accepted as a political refugee by Australia in 2011. She now lives in Perth with her young daughter, where she also exhibits as a visual artist.
READING QUESTIONS
1. The novel is rich in symbolism and metaphor; the tree that bestows enlightenment, the ghosts who communicate with the living, termites who can be heard eating through houses, forests with jinns. How do these different symbols coalesce and what do they mean?
2. This novel is replete with religious symbolism and describes ancient Iranian as well as Islamic traditions, which inform the lives of the Iranian people. Do you have a better understanding of the customs and traditions of pre-Islamic Iran and its love-hate relationship with Islam? Discuss your thoughts in relation to this.
3. At its heart, this is the story of a family, a mother and a father and their three children, caught up in a revolution they did not want and could not reconcile to. How do you think this story of a family’s destruction plays out against the backdrop of war, terror and tragedy, as described by the author?
4. This novel can be read equally as an anti-war story as well as a conservation story, evident in descriptions of the destruction of forests, gardens, homes and lives, and the way people transform into ‘other’ living beings because the natural world can sustain them when the political world won’t. How does the writer convey a sense of optimism as well as futility?