Recommended Reading: My Father's Notebook

The author of "My Father’s Notebook" is an Iranian now living in Holland and writing under the pseudonym Kader Abdolah.

The novel depicts the recent history of Iran, seen through the eyes of Aga Akbar, a deaf carpet mender from the remote province of Senejan and his son Ishmael.The area’s only merits are its beautiful Persian rugs and a cave with an ancient cuneiform inscription. 

Ishmael tells the story from his life in Holland where he has received his father's notebook written in the same cuneiform script.

As the notebook is gradually deciphered, revealing secrets about its compiler and his country, the reader is taken through a patchwork of folk tales, songs and poems on a journey of discovery about parenthood and belonging, community and loss.