The last illusion : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

The last illusion : a novel

Author:

Khakpour, Porochista.

ISBN:

9781620403044

9781408858585

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury, 2014.

Physical Description:

ix, 323 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

In a tiny village in rural Iran, Zal's demented mother -- horrified by his pale skin and hair, the opposite of her own -- becomes convinced her baby is evil. She puts him in a wire birdcage on her veranda with the rest of her caged flock, and there he stays for the next ten years -- eating birdseed and insects, defecating on the newspaper he squats upon, squawking and shrieking like the other birds. He is rescued from that hell and adopted by a behavioral analyst who brings him to New York and sets out to help him find happiness. Zal is emotionally stunted, asexual, physically unfit, and trying desperately to be human as he stumbles through adolescence. His fervent desire to be normal grows as he ages, but the fact that he still dreams in 'bird' and his secret penchant for yogurt-covered beetles make fitting in a challenge. He forges a friendship with a famous illusionist who claims he can fly -- another of Zal's bird-like obsessions -- and embarks on a romantic relationship as well. His girlfriend, Asiya, crumbling under the weight of her supposed clairvoyance, sends Zal's life spiraling out of control. Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with tragedy. 'The last illusion' is a wild, operatic, and startling homage to New York and its most harrowing catastrophe. It is tragic but laugh-out-loud funny, irreverent yet respectful, hugely imaginative yet universal.

Summary:

"In a tiny village in rural Iran, Zal's demented mother--horrified by his pale skin and hair, the opposite of her own--becomes convinced her baby is evil. She puts him in a wire birdcage on her veranda with the rest of her caged flock, and there he stays for the next ten years: eating birdseed and insects, defecating on the newspaper he squats upon, squawking and shrieking like the other birds. He is rescued from that hell and adopted by a behavioral analyst who brings him to New York and sets out to help him find happiness. Zal is emotionally stunted, asexual, physically unfit, and trying desperately to be human as he stumbles through adolescence. His fervent desire to be normal grows as he ages, but the fact that he still dreams in "bird" and his secret penchant for yogurt-covered beetles make fitting in a challenge. He forges a friendship with a famous illusionist who claims he can fly--another of Zal's bird-like obsessions--and embarks on a romantic relationship as well. His girlfriend, Asiya, crumbling under the weight of her supposed clairvoyance, sends Zal's life spiraling out of control. Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with tragedy. The Last Illusion is a wild, operatic, and startling homage to New York and its most harrowing catastrophe. It is tragic but laugh-out-loud funny, irreverent yet respectful, hugely imaginative yet universal"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject(s):

Psychological child abuse -- Fiction.

Birds -- Behavior -- Fiction.

Developmental disabilities -- Fiction.

Adopted children -- Fiction.

Medicine and psychology -- in infancy and childhood -- Fiction.

Genre:

Humorous stories.

Humorous fiction.

Fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Monmouth Public Library	Fic Khakpour, P. 2014	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"Utterly original and compelling, The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own." --Claire Messud
     From the critically acclaimed author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects comes a bold fabulist novel about a feral boy coming of age in New York, based on a legend from the medieval Persian epic the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings .
     In an Iranian village, Zal's demented mother, horrified by the pallor of his skin and hair, is convinced she has given birth to a "white demon." She hides him in a birdcage for the next decade. Rescued by a behavioral analyst, Zal awakens in New York to the possibility of a future. A stunted and unfit adolescent, he strives to become human as he stumbles toward adulthood. As New York survives one potential disaster, Y2K, and begins hurtling toward another, 9/11, Zal finds himself in a cast of fellow outsiders. A friendship with a famous illusionist who claims to the Bird Boy's delight that he can fly and an affair with a disturbed artist who believes she is clairvoyant send Zal's life spiraling into chaos. Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with devastation.
     In tones haunting yet humorous and unflinching yet reverential, The Last Illusion explores the powers of storytelling while investigating magical thinking. Its lyricism, inventiveness, and examination of otherness can appeal to readers of Salman Rushdie and Helen Oyeyemi. A celebrated chronicler of the 9/11-era, Khakpour reimagines New York's most harrowing catastrophe with a dazzling homage to her beloved city.

Author Notes

Porochista Khakpour 's debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects , was named a New York Times Editor's Choice, one of the Chicago Tribune 's Fall's Best, and the 2007 California Book Award winner in the first fiction category. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Ucross, and Yaddo. Her nonfiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Harper's , the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , Spin , Slate , and Salon , among many others.Khakpour currentlyteaches at Columbia University's MFA program, FordhamUniversity, and Wesleyan University. She lives in New York City.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The Last Illusion is Khakpour's second novel, but it has the larky-yet-self-serious aura of a first effort. We follow Zal, born eerily pale in rural Iran, and is caged and raised as a bird by his horrified mother. Adopted and gradually socialized by a benevolent scientist named Hendricks, the half-feral Zal comes to New York in summer 2001 as an (understandably) awkward teenager still fighting a taste for carrion and a desire to fly. He falls in with two equally desperate characters: the seedy magician Bran Silber who preys on Zal's dreams of flight and is planning a spectacular illusion called "Fall of the Towers," and, more significantly for Zal, the quirky Asiya McDonald, whose love for him is tested by the needs of her 500-plus-pound sister, Willa, and by premonitions of an approaching terrible event. That the inevitable convergence of these plots (allegorized by Zal's ascents and combustions) is drawn out for some time could be considered a cheap shot at pre-9/11 nostalgia, and it becomes clear that the magical-realist elements aren't convincing. Strip them away and you have a familiar, indie-cinema sort of love story, set in a stylized New York with a few swaths of memorable writing. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

An audaciously ambitious novel that teeters along a tightrope but never falls off.Following her well-received debut (Sons and Other Flammable Objects, 2007), this Iranian-American novelist returns with what on the surface is a coming-of-age story about a boy who was raised as a bird, based on a myth from the Persian Book of Kings (which finds its way into the story within this story) about an Icarus who becomes a great warrior and hero. The protagonist of this novel is neither. His name is Zal (it rhymes with "fall," which is what happens to those who cannot fly), and he was born in Iran, very pale and blond in a country of darker skins, to a mother who considered him a mistake and a "White Demon." His birth sparked his "mother's disintegration into a crazy bird lady," and she raised him in a menagerie, as a bird. The tone then shifts, or slides, from once-upon-a-time fable into something closer to American realism, as the setting shifts to New York City around the turn of the millennium. Zal has been adopted by a behavioral analyst who wants to help him develop the human side of his adolescent personality and guide him into adulthood. Zal learns to "keep the bird in him, any bird in him, so deep within himself that it resurfaced only rarely"though he does retain an appetite for insects and develops a crush on a particularly comely canary ("tiny but still voluptuous, round in all the right places"). In a coincidence that strains credulity, he happens to meet an artist who works with dead birds, who becomes his first love and is something of a strange bird herself. She suffers from anorexia, panic attacks and premonitions, the last of which proves crucial and tragic. And he encounters an illusionist who sparks the novel's title, planning to make New York disappear: "Not New York, exactly, but the New Yorkness of New York."Plot summary fails to convey the spirit of this creative flight of fancy; farce meets disaster in a novel that illuminates what it means to be human, normal and in love. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Lauded Iranian American critic and novelist Khakpour writes another gripping tale that mixes myth and history. Based on Persian folklore, The Last Illusion is the story of a feral albino boy raised in Iran until age 10 by a deranged mother who keeps him in a cage and treats him like a bird. The boy, Zal, is discovered by his grown sister and passed off to a famous American child analyst, who adopts him, takes him to New York City, and sets out to help him integrate into society. Zal takes on the streets of New York, with its myriad characters, the same way a bird might cock its head at the strangeness of human behavior, but as he grows, he longs to be normal and must fight against his instincts to be bird. Khakpour's writing walks a line between mythical and realistic, somehow melding the two seamlessly and keeping reality in sharp focus; the reader aches for Zal, who fumbles through life as neither completely bird nor completely human.--Paulson, Heather Copyright 2014 Booklist

Library Journal Review

"Exactly once upon a time in a small village in northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born." So begins this latest novel from Khakpour (Sons and Other Flammable Objects), which centers on Zal, whose mother cages him with her menagerie of birds until he is ten years old. Years after being rescued, Zal lives with his adopted father in New York City and tries to shape something of a normal life. But Zal is still obsessed with one thing-flight. He becomes fixated on illusionist Bran Silber, who claims he will fly at his forthcoming show. Enter Asiya McDonald, an artist from a grotesque Upper East Side family with her own tragic secrets and ominous premonitions, whom Zal comes to love in his own way, "normal" or not. Just as life is becoming clear to Zal, his world is threatened, and the city is blindsided by 9/11. VERDICT Khakpour's prose is fluid and visceral, while the narrative plays smoke and mirrors with reality and perspective. If some bloviating on unimportant details is overlooked, this novel is a literary gem full of sadness, guts, and wonder. For any adult who enjoys good fiction.-Shannon Greene, Greenville Technical Coll. Lib., SC (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.