The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour
The Last Illusion, By Porochista Khakpour Just how a basic concept by reading can enhance you to be an effective person? Reading The Last Illusion, By Porochista Khakpour is a very easy activity. But, how can many individuals be so careless to read? They will choose to spend their free time to chatting or hanging out. When as a matter of fact, reading The Last Illusion, By Porochista Khakpour will certainly give you a lot more probabilities to be successful completed with the hard works.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour
Best PDF Ebook The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour
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.
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour- Amazon Sales Rank: #200586 in Books
- Brand: Khakpour, Porochista
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x .84" w x 5.54" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
From Booklist 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. --Heather Paulson
Review
“Utterly original and compelling, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with very contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad--and wonderful, too.” ―Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs
“The Last Illusion deftly, unexpectedly, blends Persian myth with modern life, and with the perils and pleasures of magic. In a gripping, sinuous, sometimes explosive voice, Porochista Khakpour tell us a story like no other, with a protagonist like no other--and there is not a reader who will not remember him always.” ―Amy Bloom, author of Away
“Magical and hysterical, each sentence more beautiful than the next, The Last Illusion proves Khakpour a novelist-dazzler on the magnitude of an Aimee Bender or a Jonathan Lethem. The English language has a new master tickler and it is laughing out loud.” ―Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
“The Last Illusion is a book full of hard-fought wonders, harsh and yet full of grace, with a touch of myth, and an abundance of love. A haunting novel that lingers long after the last page.” ―Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
“Funny and haunting, bridges the distance between ancient myth and the modern world. As much a coming-of-age story as it is a clear-eyed account of our contemporary lives. This is a work of pure imagination.” ―Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free
“Khakpour's elegant, mysterious, hilarious novel contains the most intriguing and inventive collection of heartbreaking characters you'll ever meet: a mystic in search of a religion, a magician with only one trick, and of course, Zal, the feral boy who just might be a bird. Powerful, passionate, essential work!” ―Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution
“This novel confirms Khakpour as one of our best new satirists, partly because she is never as moving as when she is entirely sincere.” ―Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh
“One of the books Flavorwire has been looking forward to all year, Khakpour's latest is a stunning, darkly humorous, and at more than a few points totally heartbreaking novel abut an Iranian boy who thinks he's a bird after years of torture. We invite you to read it--and help us figure out how one writer can take such a subject and spin it into something you just want to wrap yourself in. An absolute stunner.” ―Flavorwire
“An audaciously ambitious novel that teeters along a tightrope but never falls off.” ―Kirkus, starred review
“A boy raised among birds is rescued and brought to pre-September 11 New York in Porochista Khakpour's savagely funny, Persian folktale-inspired The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury), in which coming-of-age and first love are complicated by dreams of flight and chocolate–covered crickets.” ―Vogue
“Lauded American Iranian critic and novelist Khakpour writes another gripping tale that mixes myth and history . . . . 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.” ―Booklist
“Blazingly original.” ―The Millions
“Khakpour's prose is fluid and visceral, while the narrative plays smoke and mirrors with reality and perspective . . . . This novel is a literary gem full of sadness, guts, and wonder. For any adult who enjoys good fiction.” ―Library Journal
“Ambitious, bursting with ideas, vivid characters and lush language . . . . Sad and funny in turn, real and poignant on every page . . . Khakpour's vision of a bustling, multicultural New York--stuffed with layers of idiosyncratic detail, fully alive and fully overwhelming--is literature of the first order . . . Her daring new book is a testament to the relentless search for self and connection to others, no matter how daunting the journey. A major new work of fiction.” ―Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Porochista Khakpour retells a tale of the imagination at its most sublime . . . Imagination fuels stories and stories fuel hope. If your imagination needs fuel, read this book.” ―The Rumpus
“The Last Illusion captures, in a way that few other 9/11 novels have, that contradictory sense Americans have of how easy and trivial life was before the attack . . . Khakpour is able to . . . offer us a more complex portrait of ourselves.” ―Los Angeles Times
“A darkly glittering story that draws you in from its very first pages and mesmerizes you until the last.” ―Bustle
“A storytelling masterpiece, strikingly original and ambitious in its modern retelling of an ancient myth.” ―Largehearted Boy
“Mesmerizing.” ―Vanity Fair
“The most impressive feat in Porochista Khakpour's magnificent new novel, The Last Illusion, is that it manages to peel back the calcified layers of myth and memorialization, all that 9/11 has come to mean since, and to capture the dread that [people] felt that first morning . . . Captivating.” ―The Marginalia Review
“Khakpour's sophomore novel focuses on a boy who sort of believed he was a bird. We all construct different coping mechanisms for the terrible things in our lives, but in The Last Illusion, Khakpour has created one such mechanism that is both a little sad, but randomly funny, too. It also doesn't hurt that the writing is super-smooth, and above all, extremely consuming. If you're looking to be taken away, but with an anchor to the familiar, this is your summer novel.” ―Barnes & Noble Book Blog
“The Last Illusion is an epic amalgamation of humanity. Like the novel's characters, and like Khakpour herself, it is never one thing or the other. It is legend and reality, fiction and history, Middle Eastern and American, good and evil.” ―San Francisco Chronicle
“It's hard not to think of . . . One Hundred Years of Solitude when reading Porochista Khakpour's excellent new novel, The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury) . . . The Last Illusion has the same sense of regional character that Marquez created in his fictional Macondo . . . Like Márquez, Khakpour is a magical realist who believes that the closer to reality the magic is, the more fantastic is its effect.” ―Santa Fe New Mexican
“Khakpour has contributed essays and journalism to publications both ‘mainstream' and independent, but it's her dark, funny, piercing novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007) and this year's The Last Illusion, which draws on a mix of contemporary history, Iranian myth, and psychology, that make her work feel so new and important.” ―Dazed, "Top Ten American Writers You Need to Read This Year"
“Utterly original and compelling, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion weaves Iranian myth with very contemporary American neurosis to create a bittersweet poetry all its own. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad-and wonderful, too.” ―Claire Messud
“The Last Illusion deftly, unexpectedly, blends Persian myth with modern life, and with the perils and pleasures of magic. In a gripping, sinuous, sometimes explosive voice, Porochista Khakpour tell us a story like no other, with a protagonist like no other-and there is not a reader who will not remember him always.” ―Amy Bloom
“Magical and hysterical, each sentence more beautiful than the next, The Last Illusion proves Khakpour a novelist-dazzler on the magnitude of an Aimee Bender or a Jonathan Lethem. The English language has a new master tickler and it is laughing out loud.” ―Gary Shteyngart
“The Last Illusion is a book full of hard-fought wonders, harsh and yet full of grace, with a touch of myth, and an abundance of love. A haunting novel that lingers long after the last page.” ―Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
“Funny and haunting, bridges the distance between ancient myth and the modern world. As much a coming-of-age story as it is a clear-eyed account of our contemporary lives. This is a work of pure imagination.” ―Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free
“Khakpour's elegant, mysterious, hilarious novel contains the most intriguing and inventive collection of heartbreaking characters you'll ever meet: a mystic in search of a religion, a magician with only one trick, and of course, Zal, the feral boy who just might be a bird. Powerful, passionate, essential work!” ―Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution
“One of the books Flavorwire has been looking forward to all year, Khakpour's latest is a stunning, darkly humorous, and at more than a few points totally heartbreaking novel abut an Iranian boy who thinks he's a bird after years of torture. We invite you to read it--and help us figure out how one writer can take such a subject and spin it into something you just want to wrap yourself in. An absolute stunner.” ―Flavorwire
“An audaciously ambitious novel that teeters along a tightrope but never falls off.” ―Kirkus (starred review)
“A boy raised among birds is brought to pre-September 11 New York in Porochista Khakpour's savagely funny, Persian folk-inspired The Last Illusion, in which coming-of-age and first love are complicated by dreams of flight and cravings for chocolate-covered crickets.” ―Vogue
“Lauded American Iranian critic and novelist Khakpour writes another gripping tale that mixes myth and history . . . . 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.” ―Booklist
“Blazingly original.” ―The Millions
About the Author Porochista Khakpour's debut, 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. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and her nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Harper's, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many others. She teaches at Columbia's M.F.A. program, Fordham, and Wesleyan. She lives in New York City.
Where to Download The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Enjoyable Read But Problematic By Tristan A. Hayes The Last Illusion is modern day take on a story of someone coming from a rather disadvantaged and weird or strange background (being raised as a bird) growing to become a normal human. Though one could think the story is going to be one of the happier ones it rather tends to be on the more realistic side of growing up. Characters go through the same type of events that most people go through as they grow older and attempt to learn of the world. Several of these events are told in a great way while others are a bit too extreme or out there to be anything more than just paragraphs to really skip whenever they come back into the plot. Largely that is probably the major issue with this book is that at times it can be downright uninteresting going off on tangents that aren't vital to the plot or even the development. Many of these even go to points to tell us what the characters are doing months later after the plot is resolved. Its unnecessary and kind of spoils many major events. The writer also foreshadows events too much beating into our heads often about THE BIG EVENT. IF she had toned it down then perhaps the BIG EVENT would be a bit more acceptable, which by the way ended up being written in such a short manner that many previous events in the main characters life felt more important.Its an alright read at the end of the day but it does have a few problems.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Breathtaking work of imagination, energy and scope By J.E.M. The imagination, energy and scope of this novel are breathtaking. It's incredible to me that this expansive world was contained in one person. The narration, generous and grand, bursts from the pages and is a real treat to read. I found myself fascinated by the characters in this book--fraught and desperate and weird, but also so relatable, so human. An excellent read.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Magical realism coupled with a sense of cosmic wonder By J from NY A tale that goes from being euphoric to crushing in a second, the subject is chiefly Zal, a misbegotten child. He begin his existence in a cage, and his mother finds him the quality of his skin disgusting. Sort of reminiscent of something by Par Lagerkvist, he is saved by his sister and later adopted by an American father and begins a search for his true identity.The fascinating parts of this novel, to me, were when Zal dreams in bird language. His identity is so horribly distorted by his mother's objectification of him as some kind of animal that he imagines he thinks this way, as well. I would read another book by Khakpour--it is a bit like the union of Lagerkvist and Marquez. Recommended.
See all 43 customer reviews... The Last Illusion, by Porochista KhakpourThe Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour PDF
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour iBooks
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour ePub
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour rtf
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour AZW
The Last Illusion, by Porochista Khakpour Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar