It is through these characters that Sofer conveys the yearning of a people for a country that exists only in their memories of its smells, sounds, and faded photographs. In The Septembers of Shiraz, Dalia Sofer has, with extraordinary skill, woven together a cast of characters replete with endearing qualities and rife with character flaws and shortcomings. The prosperous Amin family, Jewish, yet not religious, is guilty of a crime that is unforgivable in Ayatollah-ruled Iran: they had lived a life of luxury, doing business and fraternizing with the aristocracy during the rule of the Shah, rendering them despicable and deserving of punishment in the eyes of the recently empowered Mullahs and their followers. Simultaneous with the overthrow of the Shah by Islamic militants, nine-year-old Shirin Amin’s life is thrown into a Kafkaesque decline, as her father Issac is jailed and tortured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and her mother’s carefree and luxurious life and material trappings are both literally and figuratively torn apart.
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