For the first time in a long time, Darius learns to love himself no matter what external forces attempt to squash his confidence. Sohrab teaches Darius what friendship is really about: loyalty, honesty, and someone who has your back in a football (soccer) match. But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd. When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either.
Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life. YA-adult)ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. This is the Revolutionary War seen at its intersection with slavery through a disturbingly original lens. The cover’s gruesomely masked Octavian epitomizes a nation choking on its own hypocrisy. Written in a richly faithful 18th-century style, the revelations of Octavian’s increasingly degraded circumstances slowly, horrifyingly unfold to the reader as they do to Octavian. Like many Africans, Octavian runs away, joining the Revolutionary army, which fights for “liberty,” while ironically never assuring slaves freedom.
But events force the destitute College to depend on a new benefactor who demands research that proves the inferiority of the black race. Upon learning that he’s a slave, Octavian resolves to prove his excellence. Octavian is domiciled with a gentleman scholar at the “College of Lucidity.” A sentient being, he is a living experiment, from his classical education to the notated measurement of his bodily intake and output as such, the study will degenerate from earnest scholarly investigation to calculated sociopolitical propaganda.
Readers are seduced by a gothic introduction to the child Octavian, whose bizarre situation is both lavish and eerie.
A historical novel of prodigious scope, power and insight, set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War.
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