On The Bookshelf ci\

`Moonlight
On The Avenue
Of Faith'

Weaving together strands of Persian
and Jewish culture, author Gina Nahai
brings to life a group of women rooted
in their homeland but reshaping
their lives in America.

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6/4
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92 Detroit Jewish News

Gina Nahai: Born in Iran and educated in Switzerland and
the United States, this author of fiction studied the politics of
Iran for the U.S. Defense Department.

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OUR
GREAT

R

oxanna the Angel's only
material inheritance from
her mother, Shusha the
Beautiful, is a tear jar. The
glass vessel was used to gather tears
after every loss, and when it was full,
its owner would drink the salty water
to prove her grief In Gina Nahai's
novel Moonlight on the Avenue of
Faith, set in the Iranian Jewish com-
munity, the glass is often full.
Nahai writes in a textured style that
blends history, folklore and magic real-
ism. A scene of a winged Roxanna fly-
ing through the air conjures a

Sandee Brawarsky is a New York-based
freelance book critic.

Chagall-like painting. The story also
brings to mind Isaac Bashevis Singer
and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but
Nahai's Iranian cadences make it alto-
', ether different.
She is perhaps the first novelist to por-
tray the world of Iranian Jews over the
last 50 years. She re-creates a world that
is no more in Tehran, and then depicts
the community's re-emergence in Los
Angeles, "the land of choices."
At the center of the affecting novel is
Roxanna, a "bad-luck" child in a family
with a tradition Of runaway women.
Born in the Jewish ghetto in Tehran,
she marries into a wealthy family whose
grand home is on the Avenue of Faith
and gives birth to a daughter, Lili,
whom she fears will share her destiny
of bringing misfortune.
She flies off, leaving her husband