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WWW.KANSAS.COM SUNDAY, AUGUST 5, 2012 THE WICHITA EAGLE 3C WWW.KANSAS.COM/LIVING A novel to finish off a summer of reading, the kind to devour in one sitting, is Name Ver- by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperi- on, $16.99, ages 14 and up). The story is narrated by a young woman spy captured in Nazi- occupied France; her Gestapo torturers will allow her to live as long as her confession has prom- ise, and she strings them along, Scheherazade-style. hard to offer a taste without immediately giving away secrets, but consider that is a fancy word for the thing interrogators want and people will die to de- fend and know that grand a germophobe? Some cool series, new and ongoing: Vicious by Zorai- da Cordova (Sourcebooks Fire, $9.99, ages 12 and up) begins a series that could make mermaids cool for boys. by Josephine Angelini (HarperTeen, $17.99, ages 13 and up) follows the lovers of modern- day scions of Greek-hero clans. by Kiera Cass (HarperTeen, $17.99, ages 12 and up), opens a series that asks she marry the with a fierce- ness.

by Veronica Roth (Katherine lins, $17.99, ages 12 and up), the gripping follow-up to makes you wonder, among other things, what they will call the series finale. by Andrew Lane (Farrar Straus Giroux, Macmillan Audio, ages 12 and up). The second in the series about Sherlock Holmes as a youth has a particularly exciting audio edition. conflicts are in store. This is a book for teenagers it gets grue- some as well as adults who have discovered the pleasures of teen novels.

(Dial, $19.99, ages 14 and up) is a great novel to settle in with. the third tale set in Kristin richly imagined fantasy world, follow- ing and The three interconnectedness is not linear, so each can be the starting point for a literary love affair. characters may inhabit a land where bizarre superhuman powers are common, but her down-to-earth interest in how people work that capti- vates. Summer is a good time to stand back and find the humor in high- school life. Aaron hero in and (Farrar Straus Giroux, $16.99, ages 12 and up) wants to fall in love but struggles with obsessive-com- pulsive disorder.

How to touch the girl of your dreams when Summer books for teens and tweens BY SONJA BOLLE Newsday Exceptions" by David Cristofano (GrandCentral, $24.99) From the Edgar Award-nominated author of "The Girl She Used to Be" comes the story of the Bovaros, one of the most powerful and respected families in organized crime. When following the family motto of "no loose ends" means taking out Melody a woman who can testify against the family Jonathan instead keeps his silence and vows to protect her. The decision forces him to move from a life always known into a future he never imagined. "The Investigation" by Philippe Claudel (Nan A. $25) Remniscent of Kafka and Beckett, Claudel has created a dark fable that focuses on an ordinary investigator whose world becomes extraordinary when he is assigned to investigate 22 suicides occuring over the course of 18 months.

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Why How We Do Anything Means by Dov Seidman 8. by Walter Isaacson 9. by Glenn Beck 10. Skinny by Bob Harper From Publishers Weekly BEST SELLERS by Mah- moud Dowlatabadi, trans- lated by Tom Patterdale (Melville House Publishing, 256 pages, $17.95 paper) Forbidden: Poems From Iran and Its edited by Sholeh Wolpe (Michigan State University Press, 182 pages, $19.95 paper) This is how the world ends.An old man, drenchedfrom relentless rain, hav-ing just buried his teenage daughter who was tortured to death for distributing anti- government pamphlets med- itates on the horrid fate of his five children three dead at the hands of successive, oppres- sive regimes; one driven mad in prison and now hiding in his base- ment; one surviving through marriage to a profi- teering syco- phant, who props up whichever corrupt despot is in power. At the same time, the old man reviews the shame and humilia- tion of his mortal sins mur- der and military insubordina- tion.

He dons his dress uniform, stripped of its insignia, takes down the gleaming saber from his living-room wall the saber he ran through the heart of his adulterous wife, then eviscerated her with feels the edge of the blade, runs his thumb across his jugular vein, steps out into the courtyard, crowded by the specters of his past, and takes his own life. His is the tragic face of Iran; his a story still untold in his birthplace, banned by the Islamic Republic censors. He is the colonel, who be- lieves that ancient tribal customs of our country still more or less And yet: well aware that at every stage of history there have been crimes against humanity, and they have happened without humans to commit them. The crimes that have been visited on my children have been committed, and still are being committed, by young people just like them, by people stirring up their delusions, giving them delusions of grandeur. So why do I imagine that people might improve? Saluting There are two reliable ways to discover the character of another country.

The first and most successful is what I call sustained indepen- dent travel. You need to have the secure props of home kicked out from under you for as long as you can manage. You need to struggle to become, however temporarily, a true, fledgling local. The second way is through the great gift of world liter- ature. Here, you engage in an intimate exchange between one creative mind (the writer) and another (you, the reader).

This is how the commonalities of the human condition come to light: through the paradox of the truth of fiction. Now, consider Iran, the country in question. For most inveterate American travelers, it is not a destination of choice. We still associate it with terror- ism, with the drive to produce unneeded nuclear weapons, with George W. infa- mous of We may never wholly shed these charac- terizations.

But one path to- ward inward detente is to con- template the glories of ancient Persia, the millennia-old moth- erland of modern-day Iran. Indeed, Persian is the exalted language of Iranian literature, reaching its pinnacle in the poems of the 13th-century mystic Rumi. It is the key (through the inestimable boun- ty of translation by Tom Patter- dale and Sholeh Wolpe) that lets us unlock the hidden heart of a people. It is the language of the har- rowing novel by patriarch of fiction, Mah- moud Dowlatabadi, and it is the language of the lyricism and loss that haunt the works of contemporary poets in Iran and in exile around the world. At 71, Dowlatabadi looms as the colossus of Iranian liter- ature, a self-taught writer who revolutionized his fiction, hardening its diction, infusing it with a street-wise poetry of everyday speech.

He is best known in Iran for a 10-book, saga about a nomadic Kurdish family, part of which he wrote during his two years in prison under the dictatorship. After his release, Dowlatabadi soon began framing Colo- a novel 25 years in the making, still banned by the Iranian censors, still unread in its native language. At the time of the conception shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah and replaced him with the Ayatollah Khomei- ni intellectuals in Iran were executed, and Dowlatabadi was called in for questioning. He hid his novel from the authorities, picking up the manuscript periodically to advance the narrative, refine the prose, and express the terrors of totalitarianism, whether secular or religious: the putrescence our has gone far beyond any normal bounds, so they have to use scissors and kitchen knives and a bow saw to re- move the rotting flesh from our bones and, since we are rotten to the marrow, they decide to amputate our bones and they cut off our hands, that this corrupt body might be dismembered and then, in a manner of their own prior devising, Like a strong drink that leaves a dizzying taste on your tongue, has aged into a psychological and political masterpiece of world literature. Reviewers in Great Britain were among the first to gain access to the novel, which was released this spring in the United States by a small press, Melville House.

Such privilege apparently did little to enlighten the English critics. One labeled Dowlataba- accomplishment others complained about the confusing, fragmented narrative. Far from being a fable, is a heightened, un- flinching exploration of psycho- logical realism. It is a mirror of the tortured soul of a nation, and its generations of victims. All the action takes place in one night and the fol- lowing day.

Historical flash- backs and stream-of-conscious- In my sight, you are a dark tempest that has suddenly seized a thousand youthful leaves. Let the wailing of your prisoners grow so loud that they cannot be contained. Let the flood of tears and blood flow until the roses of revenge rise from the soil. Though highly charged with the spirit of revolt, the political poems pale beside the gems of lyric control, of com- pact dramatic tension, of a fierce allegiance to poetic form. Of course, the strength of an anthology also hides its Achilles heel: We hear a vast array of voices, but they are unequal in the merit of their achievement.

Yet one voice rises above the rest: Simin whose poem so well known in Wolpe writes, it is often recited by Listen to the begin- ning and end: And behold the camel, how it was created: not from mud and water, but, as if from patience and a mirage. Patience spawns hatred and hatred the fatal wound: behold with what vengeance the camel bit through the arteries of its driver. The mirage lost its patience. And behold the camel. With both and in hand, you will have a fuller portrait of contemporary Iran.

Throw in Essential translat- ed by Coleman Barks, and the three books may not change your politics, may not alter the way you view the nightly news, may not prod you to set foot in Iran, but they will if read openly, intimately, one creative mind to another release the relentless rain of literature from the majestic skies of Persia to slake your thirsty soul. Reach Arlice Davenport at 316-268-6256 or ness reveries fill out the story- line with layer after layer of political brutality and betrayal, all interpreted by the colonel as a travesty of the once-cherished majesty of his beloved Persia. Only the most superficial reading could fail to detect the way that Dowlatabadi succeeds at leaving clues to help the reader navigate the shifting points of view and time frames. What raises to an even higher pitch of artistic excellence is expert handling of moral ambi- guity. The colonel is guilty of unspeakable familial atrocities, yet he is also a clear-eyed wit- ness to the cannibalism of repressive regimes.

His son, Amir, driven mad by the secret police, feels strangely compelled to protect his in- terrogator, who has become the target of angry mobs seeking to hang their former executioners. If the overall narrative sweep of resounds as Shakespearean, then its psycho- logical acuity is patently Dosto- evskian: Here, the Underground Man strides triumphantly across the Earth, spreading his nihil- istic gospel of spite and suspi- cion, humiliation and hate. Yet aesthetic mastery in is so assured that he lends the gros- sest brutality a ghostly beauty: I know this much, that young birds get lost in the wind, partic- ularly in a west wind. It confuses them and makes them giddy, it ties them up in knots and they lose their sense of direction and in their struggle to find their way, they break their wings. And in a storm there is no shortage of hawks and vultures looking for prey.

Fruits of One of the great virtues of Sholeh introduction to an anthology of poems by Iranians and exiles from the country, is that it clearly explains why Colo- is banned in Iran, and why all other works still smack of subversion to the Islamic authorities. a country like Iran, liter- ature, particularly poetry, is like rain it cannot be Wolpe writes. the first who recognize pow- er are the tyrants themselves. fear the poets, jail them, torture them and send them into exile, but they cannot silence their As such, looms as a monument to the heroism; it is a downpour of defiant, nurturing rain. Hellish beast! The TORTURED face of Iran FICTION A banned novel greatest living writer and poetry from the country and its exiles give voice to the high cost of oppression.

BY ARLICE DAVENPORT The Wichita Eagle Courtesy photo Mahmoud Dowlatabadi has revolutionized the diction of Iranian fiction. AUTHOR TALK WHAT WRITERS ARE SAYING WROTE THIS BOOK to answer the question posed by its title. a question that was very real to me, and I wanted to use everything at my disposal, including the things I was encountering in the world, the things I was imagining and more. I worrying about fiction or nonfiction. I was just concerned with working my way to the end of that question in the best way I could, using whatever I Sheila Heti, author of the novel Should a Person.