Kader Abdolah
Kader Abdolah (b. 1954, Iran) studied physics in Teheran and was active in the student resistance. He published two novels about life under the Khomeini regime before fleeing his homeland in 1985. Three years later he came to the Netherlands.
He quickly mastered the Dutch language and started writing in it. He debuted with De adelaars (Eagles, 1993), a collection of short stories which earned him the Golden Dog-Ear Award for the best-sold debut of the year. He has since published the short-story collection De meisjes en de partizanen (The Girls and the Partisans, 1995) and the novels De reis van de lege flessen (The Journey of the Empty Bottles, 1997), Spijkerschrift (Cuneiform, 2000), which was awarded the E. du Perron Prize, and Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque, 2006). In 2008 he published De boodschapper (The Messenger), about the prophet Mohammed, and an alternative translation of the Koran underlining a more moderate and ‘human’ Islam. Abdolah’s work has been published in more than 20 languages.
More Kader Abdolah
The King
Kader Abdolah’s book 'The King' places him in a tradition that goes back centuries, the tradition of great storytellers with their tales and legends about the illustrious rulers of Persia. There is a particular reason for his choice of material: his great-great-grandfather, Mirza Kabir, was the vizier of Shah Naser, who ruled at the turn of the nineteenth century.
The House of the Mosque
For eight hundred years the house next to the mosque in the Iranian city of Senejan has been in the hands of one family, which has provided imams for the mosque for generations as well as producing the city’s leading merchants. At the start of the novel, in 1969, Aqa Jaan is Senejan’s most successful merchant and the head of its bazaar. He regards his great-nephew Shahbal as his natural successor.