At the invitation of the
American Association for Netherlandic Studies, Dutch-Iranian writer Kader Abdolah will be on a lecture tour through the United States this spring. Kader Abdolah, the pen name of Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani, came to the Netherlands in 1988 as a political refugee from Iran. He was then 34 years old and did not speak a single word of Dutch.
Confusion
In De reis van de lege flessen (Journey of the Empty Bottles, 1997), he described his original confusion regarding the Dutch way of life, comparing Iran as a culture where everything happens behind the curtains to the Netherlands, a society without curtains, where everything is done in a half-naked way. Abdolah started writing simple stories about being a foreigner in the Netherlands and has, in the meantime, become one of the most celebrated novelists in Dutch literature. Since 1996, Abdolah also writes columns in the prominent Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant under the name of Mirza (Persian for 'chronicler').
Struggle
Abdolah’s struggle with the Dutch language is metaphorically reflected in his autobiographical novel Spijkerschrift (translated into 13 languages, including in English by Susan Massotty as My Father's Notebook in 2006). It tells the story of the political dissident Ishmael, who, in his new home in the Netherlands, attempts to translate his father’s notebook into Dutch. In this process of translating and deciphering, he narrates his father's story, his own story, and the story of twentieth-century Iran. This task is complicated by the fact that his mute and illiterate father wrote the notebook in a self-invented cuneiform script. While Ishmael’s writing in Dutch represents the construction of a new homeland, the process of translation brings back memories and mysteries of his native Persia. His search for a new identity in the Netherlands entails a complicated deciphering of the past, which results in his rewriting the history of his father’s land in the literature of his new language. Like his father, who was a carpet-mender, Ishmael interweaves both traditional and new elements into a colorful tapestry of words. In 2006, Abdolah discussed the impact of Islamic fundamentalism on the daily life of a tradition-conscious family in Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque). This book was voted second best Dutch novel ever; the English translation has been published this January. In his latest work, Abdolah undertook the difficult task of translating the Q'uran into Dutch, yet he deliberately altered some parts in the original version to make the book more accessible for a Western audience.
A traveler on tour
Abdolah begins his American tour on March 7 at Columbia University, New York, and will continue his journey to Ithaca (Cornell University, March 12-17), Ann Arbor (University of Michigan, March 12-17), Bloomington (University of Indiana, March 17-22) and Minneapolis (University of Minnesota, March 27-April 2). He will end his tour at the University of California, Berkeley, where he will spend the entire month of April. Following in the footsteps of Cees Nooteboom, Harry Mulisch and Leon de Winter, Abdolah will receive the distinguished position of a Regents’ Professor. His Regents’ lecture at Berkeley will take place in the prestigious Morrison Room on April 15th.
Kader Abdolah’s American tour is organized with the support of the Dutch Language Union and the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.
In 2001, Abdolah wrote about his struggle with Dutch in The Low Countries.
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