At the Wall of the Almighty: A Novel (Emerging Voices Series)

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and heartbreaking
Review: At the Wall of the Almighty shows what it would feel like to be cast into the worst level of hell. The nameless narrator is pulled through the labyrinth of a fanatical prison with his imagination as his only salvation. With his longing for home and his lost twin, he is a loveable hero, and we long for his escape. What makes the book bearable is his dignity and innocence in the face of such raw brutality. His spirit never breaks.

Rating:
Summary: I could not put it down until I read the last page
Review: Beautiful and horrible, as haunting as it is disturbing, Farnoosh Moshiri's At the Wall of the Almighty takes us through a prison in a land where religion has become law. The political prisoner narrates us through a chilling rapport with Looney Kamal, his guard and torturer. At the same time he is sifting through memories of family, passion and capture in a desperate attempt to remember and cling to who and what he is. Moshiri's poetical prose weaves memories and characters together, unravels the threads, then draws them together again with unsettling shrewdness.

Rating:
Summary: Brutal but extraordinary
Review: This is perhaps one of the most brutal, horrifying books about a country's inner turmoil that I have ever read, but don't be put off by that...it is also a singularly brilliant testament of man's inhumanity to man, a masterpiece. As our nameless narrator moves through the prison toward the eventual cell of the Unbreakables (the point of no return), his memories--lost to him at the onset of the novel--slowly come back, and as the walls get darker, so too does the story of his life. Moshiri deftly captures the terrifying feelings that accompany torture, and the remnants of hope that sustain the bleak lives of those trapped in Hall 20, cell 4. I kept trying to guess the ending of this book as I read, but it was impossible, and yet it ends exactly as it should, and that's the beauty of this work.