Persian Brides

by Dorit Rabinyan and Yael Lotan

Book Overview

From a distinctive and powerful new voice, here is a novel of rare beauty and extraordinary accomplishment. Set at the turn of the century in the fictional Persian village of Omerijan, Persian Brides tells the magical story of two young girls--Flora and Nazie Ratoryan--and their many neighbors in the almond tree alley in Omerijan where they live. Fifteen-years-old, pregnant, and recently abandoned by her cloth-merchant husband, Flora longs...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807614300
• ISBN13: 9780807614303
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: George Braziller
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful insightful story

This is a beautifully written and insightful story. It reveals a culture unknown to most. There are deep Iranian ties here combined with Persian Jewish heritage and a bit of magical realism. This is a rare peek into life.

WONDERFUL

A great novel. I could not put it down from start to finish. Funny, sexy, sharp with images and characters that were painfuly exact. I come from an Iranian Jewish family and lived there until I was three - it simply felt real: full of the all love and all the hate. Just wonderful.

Hypnotizing!

A magical tale of two child brides in the beginning of the century in Iran. Strong images, powerful writing & soulful shrewdness. Hypnotizing & absolutely recommended.

Lavishing praise on beautiful prose

Dorit Rabinyan has given the world a masterpiece in two respects, a great story and incomperable writing. To begin with, this story is both humorous and quirky. Ms. Rabinyan is a gifted storyteller. The characters are three dimensional in every respect and the reader can identify and visualize every one of them as real, even though magic and superstition play heavily into this book. And of course the story is funny. I laughed out loud at several points at this book. My friend to whom I lent this book also laughed at the descriptions. Only one other Israeli author, the brilliant Orly Castel-Bloom, can really capture humor in the same way, though Ms. Castel-Bloom masterfully utilizes the modern and absurd to form social commentary, whereas Ms. Rabinyan tells a story straightforwardly. No matter how remarkable her ability to tell a story is, Ms. Rabinyan's most amazing achievement is her actual writing. Very rarely is the world gifted with a writer who knows exactly which words fit at the exact right time in the most perfect order. James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and William Shakespeare are three classic examples. Their words not only perfect but transcendent. I sincerely hope that Dorit Rabinyan can attain the same kind of immortality, for she deserves it.

Stunning debut novel by Israel's hottest literary star!

At 18, Dorit Rabinyan published a her debut collection of poetry. Not long after her first play was produced. Not long after that her first film turned heads in Israel. Now, her first novel--Persian Brides--after commercial success abroad, is being published for the first time in the U.S. If the trade reviews are any indication, we're witnessing the birth of a new literary star. Set in a fictional Persian village at the turn of the century, two young women fight abandonment and longing, which somehow come to mean the same thing. Flora, 15 years old and pregnant, longs for the return of her husband. Nazie, 11 years old, yearns to be married. In telling their magical tale, Rabinyan traces the history of a country and its quirky legends. Its a masterful blend of fantasy and reality. This vivid tale has a flavor to be savored. Rabinyan will come to the U.S. for the first time this March to celebrate the American publication of Persian Brides, as well as to celebrate Israel's 50th Anniversary.