In September at Matilda Bookshop Book Club, we discussed the unsettling and crisp, Desolation by Hossein Asgari. With a framing device that sees an Iranian Australian writer, making notes in an Adelaide cafe, approached by an elderly down-on-his-luck Iranian with a 'story for you', so begins a tale within a tale. 

The central thread sees a young and naive adolescent, Amin, falling in love with his glamorous neighbour (whose family has just moved from Tehran), discovering literature, questioning faith, all while living under the oppressive regime of 1980s Iran. When his beloved brother, a promising mathematician is killed in the civilian Iran Air Flight 655 shot down by US missiles in the Persian Gulf, his world is literally shattered by grief and loss. 

This book elicited one of our most strident discussions yet, as we unpacked the framing device, the slipperiness of the unreliable narrator, how violence always begets violence, and what we learned about the grass roots of a nascent, revolutionary Al-Qaeda. This is an incredible account of how young men can be exploited in their grief or rage by powerful forces. It is a story of war from a Persian vantage point. It is a story of adolescence and falling in calf-love. It is a book about the healing imperative or destructive nature of stories. A dynamic and impressive discussion. MOLLY

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Articles, reviews, and interviews referenced/mentioned in the September sessions:

"Desolation by Hossein Asgari review – an accomplished exploration of love, truth and the cruelty of fate" by Catriona Menzies-Pike in The Guardian

"Hossein Asgari's Desolation" by Geordie Williamson in The Saturday Paper

"‘Literature should make us question things’: Hossein Asgari grapples with memory and grief in Desolation" by Rachael Mead in InDaily

"Living it Line by Line: Hossein Asgari and Kim Cheng Boey on writing fiction about poets" in The Sydney Review of Books

"Hossein Asgari’s Desolation speaks powerfully of the destructiveness of war and the hope that lies in fiction" by Michelle Hamadache in The Conversation

Iran Air Flight 655, entry in the Britannica

Other books and films mentioned:

Only Sound Remains by Hossein Asgari (Miles Franklin shortlist 2024)

Toward the End by Ali Alizadeh

The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights

Flesh by David Szalay

My Tehran For Sale (film)

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Thank you to all the recent newcomers to book club, and of course, our longtermers: you all contribute in making this a collaborative celebration of books and shared reading.

If you didn't make it but you are intrigued by the discussion of the book, you can get a 20% book club discount by using the code MATILDABOOKCLUB when you purchase Desolation online. 

Just beautiful books  |  matildabookshop.com.au