Equal of the Sun by Anita Amirrezvani

If you knew absolutely nothing about this book and I said that it was set in the 16th century, featured a royal princess who needed to fight and scheme for her royal rights, court intrigue, illicit romance, murders and so much more, you might think Elizabeth I, or maybe Mary, Queen of Scots. Princess Pari Khan Khanoom Safavi was a contemporary of those two women but instead of looming large on the world stage, Pari's power was concentrated in the harem and the court of Iran.

Pari is the beloved daughter of the Shah Tahmasb, and she is one of his closest advisors. When he dies, she puts her own grief to one side and begins to corral the powerbrokers of the court to bring them together to protect the throne for her brother Isma'il as he makes the journey from exile back to the Royal Court to claim his throne. Pari fully expects that, in gratitude and in recognition of her actions, Isma'il will name her as one of his chief advisors and she will help him reign. But, in a familiar tale the world over, many of the most influential figures in the court are threatened by a strong woman who they say should be at home looking after her children and not asserting herself into the volatile political world. Rather than giving Pari the power she desires, Isma'il is convinced that she is a threat to him and treats her accordingly. 

With the shahs having several wives and many children, there are lots of possible contenders for the throne and so Pari has plenty of scope for intrigue and for planning but would the viziers  and appointees that people the court follow Pari if, or maybe it should be when, there is a need to find yet another Shah in due course.

Pari's story is told by the eunuch who rose through the ranks at court to the exalted rank of her vizier. Javaher was something of a rarity among the eunuchs in that he chose to be made into a eunuch at the age of 16, having experienced the joys of sexual love rather than being forced to have the operation as a young boy. 

Whilst Pari's story was the focus of the novel, Javaher's own story was also very interesting. The reason why he chose to be castrated was so that he would come to court to serve the Shahs but also to try and find out what exactly happened to his father. He was an accountant who had risen to the top of the court, but then he was accused of treason and killed leaving Javaher to look after his sister and mother.  As a eunuch, Javaher can access the parts of the harem that are off limits to normal men. Many eunuchs traded the secrets of the court, and Javaher is no exception, acting as Pari's eyes and ears as well as messenger and co-conspirator.

I read and absolutely loved this author's first book, Blood of Flowers which I read nearly five years ago now. As soon as I heard that there was a new Anita Amirrezvani book coming out, I was very excited! Whilst this one wasn't quite as good as Blood of Flowers for me, I did find it very interesting to read, mainly because it is a such a different setting within which to look a the lives of women than you find in your normal run of the mill historical fiction novel.  There are times when the details that the author provide crowd out the plot and yet it is hard to be critical because of lot of those details were fascinating for the most part. The food, the clothes, the palace were all detailed in a way that leapt off the page. Sometimes though, those details slowed down the action.  I was a little bit surprised at how graphic the castration scene and the after effects were (left me feeling a bit squeamish just like the foot binding scenes do when you read historical fiction set in China) and also by the scenes talking about Javaher's sexuality.

I will definitely be looking forward to Anita Amirrezvani's next book. I just hope that we don't have to wait another five years for it!

Rating: 3.5/5


Synopsis

Legendary women--from Anne Boleyn to Queen Elizabeth I to Mary, Queen of Scots--changed the course of history in the royal courts of sixteenth-century England. They are celebrated in history books and novels, but few people know of the powerful women in the Muslim world, who formed alliances, served as key advisers to rulers, lobbied for power on behalf of their sons, and ruled in their own right. In "Equal of the Sun, "Anita Amirrezvani's gorgeously crafted tale of power, loyalty, and love in the royal court of Iran, she brings one such woman to life, Princess Pari Khan Khanoom Safavi. Iran in 1576 is a place of wealth and dazzling beauty. But when the Shah dies without having named an heir, the court is thrown into tumult. Princess Pari, the Shah's daughter and protege, knows more about the inner workings of the state than almost anyone, but the princess's maneuvers to instill order after her father's sudden death incite resentment and dissent. Pari and her closest adviser, Javaher, a eunuch able to navigate the harem as well as the world beyond the palace walls, are in possession of an incredible tapestry of secrets and information that reveals a power struggle of epic proportions.

Based loosely on the life of Princess Pari Khan Khanoom, "Equal of the Sun "is a riveting story of political intrigue and a moving portrait of the unlikely bond between a princess and a eunuch. Anita Amirrezvani is a master storyteller, and in her lustrous prose this rich and labyrinthine world comes to vivid life with a stunning cast of characters, passionate and brave men and women who defy or embrace their destiny in a Machiavellian game played by those who lust for power and will do anything to attain it.

Thanks to the publisher and TLC Booktours for providing a review copy of this book.  Don't forget to check out the fascinating guest post - Why I Love to Write About Eunuchs - from Anita.

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Why I Love to Write About Eunuchs by Anita Amirrezvani (blog tour)

Later today I will have my review up for Anita Amirrezvani's new book Equal of the Sun. In the mean time though, Anita tells us why she loves to write about eunuchs. Fascinating subject choice!

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When I first started writing my novel Equal of the Sun, I tried using six alternating narrators. As the writing progressed, I faced reality and whittled down the narrators to the three who interested me the most. Eventually, to my surprise , a single character emerged as the most compelling of the bunch: a eunuch named Javaher.

Eunuchs are practically forgotten these days, but once they were administrators, scholars, pages, guards, even soldiers – the human capital of empires. Thousands upon thousands of them served the Byzantine, Iranian, Ottoman, Mughal, and Chinese courts. One estimate put the number of eunuchs in China in 1644 at 100,000.

In the Islamic world, eunuchs were often the only individuals who were freely able to move between the royal men’s and women’s spheres. At these highest levels of society, people of opposite genders were generally limited to social intercourse with their immediate family – mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles.

Outside of this circle, the genders did not mix freely. Royal women covered themselves in front of men to whom they were not related or avoided them altogether; and men were not permitted in the women’s sphere (“harem” comes from an Arabic word that means “forbidden.”). For this and other reasons, eunuchs were necessary servants of the realm. Sometimes they were considered to be a “third sex,” neither male nor female but something altogether different.

My narrator, Javaher, undergoes an unusual journey to becoming a eunuch. He starts his life as a privileged young nobleman, but due to a family catastrophe and a desire to improve his lot, he decides to undergo castration at the age of seventeen. Before that, he experiences life as an ordinary male, including as a sexual one, in sixteenth century Iran. Later, when he is hired to serve the powerful princess Pari, he becomes deeply involved in the politics of the harem and gets to know the royal women in an intimate fashion.

When Javaher discovers that Pari is a woman of fierce intelligence with a fighting spirit, he starts to ponder what exactly makes people male or female. Is it their equipment? Their state of mind? The way they are perceived? Or something else? The more he serves Pari, the more he begins to question his own preconceptions about the characteristics “inherent” in each sex.

Eventually, Javaher comes to the conclusion that he and the princess share a certain gender fluidity, one that helps explain their deep bond. “I don’t have royal blood, but we two could have been twins. It was as if we swam in the same fluids in our mother’s womb, so that some of my maleness became hers and some of her femaleness mine. That made us strange in the eyes of the world, which does not care
for in-between things.”

In-between things have much to teach us about the world, but perhaps even more about ourselves. What if we didn’t know who was what? What if, as in Ursula K. Le Guin’s inventive novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, or Virginia Woolf’s playful Orlando, we could morph into either gender as needed? What if we could jettison our baggage about sexual roles and actually see people as people? After all, we are more than the sum of our “parts.”

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The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Once there was a girl who could make glorious carpets from wool tinted with the essence of orange safflowers and pomegranates

In Persia, in the seventeenth century, a young woman is forced to leave behind the life she knows and move to a new city. Her father's unexpected death has upended everything - her expectation of marriage, her plans for the future - and cast her and her mother upon the mercy of relatives in the fabled city of Isfahan.

Her uncle is a wealthy designer of carpets for the Shah's court, and the young woman is instantly drawn to his workshop. She takes in everything - the dyes, the yarns, the meanings of the thousand ancient patters - and quickly begins designing carpets herself. This is men's work, but her uncle recognizes both her passion and her talent and allows her secretly to cross that line.

But then a single disastrous, headstrong act threatens her very existence and casts her and her mother into an even more desperate situation. She is forced into an untenable form of marriage, a marriage contract renewable monthly, for a fee, to a wealthy businessman. Caught between forces she can barely comprehend, she knows only that she must act on her own, risking everything, or face a life lived at the whim of others.

The world of medieval Persia comes alive in this luminous novel, from its dazzling architecture to its bustling markets with their baskets of spices and breathtaking turquoise-and-gold rugs. With spellbinding Persian tales and prose as radiant as the city of Isfahan, The Blood of Flowers is the remarkable adventure of one woman choosing a life - against all odds - on the strength of her own hands, mind and will.

Marg says:

Sometimes it is a real breath of fresh air to read about an unusual time and place, especially when the story is also well written and interesting! The setting for this book in 17th century Persia, during the time of Shah Abbas, and features a young girl who is trying to make her way into the male dominated world of carpet making.

The author was very skilled at weaving together both the story of the girl, but also details about the techniques used in the designing of carpets, in the selection of the colours to make the carpets, and the precision required by the carpet knotters. There are also several old Persian tales that have been interwoven into the narrative, used to illustrate and to guide our young heroine.

When one of the town elders brings back the almanac for the year, the small country town is interested to see what is destined for their lives - for marriages, births, the harvest etc. For one young girl in particular she is interested to hear what is going to come as she is now of a marriageable age. This year is an unusual one though. There has been a comet in the night sky, and everyone knows that that means bad luck. For the small but happy family, that ominous sign comes to eventuality when her father dies, leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves. After running out of resources, including those that were meant to be her dowry, the two head to the big city to request assistance from the brother of the husband and father.

Once in the city, the pair become basically house servants, but the young girl gets to visit the great carpet market making workshop owned by the Shah, which is run by her uncle, and gradually her uncle begins to teach her many of the secrets of the process, including design, colour selection and knotting with the most luxurious of threads.

After being caught acting rashly more than once, the young girl is contracted with a sigheh - a renewable marriage contract, that everyone involved in has agreed to keep this secret. The end result of this is given that there is now no dowry left, the girl is being forced to give away the only thing she has left of any value - her virginity. It takes a long time for our heroine to get used to the ways of her husband and to learn the secret of wifely enjoyment, and there are several times throughout the story that her mother is worried that the sigheh will not be renewed, which means that the contracted price won't be paid. It is quite an interesting contrast. By day the girl is a servant, subject to her aunt's somewhat nasty treatment, using every spare minute she has to learn to make carpets. By night, she is a wife, albeit subject to her husband's whims.

Life then offers a choice - to continue as things are, or to take a chance at having a different and more independent life. There are many lessons to be learned, and many of them are painful. There are times when things get much worse before they get better, but our girl's spirit is strong, and she is willing to learn the lessons that life is teaching her!

This book took 9 years to write, and you can tell that for the author this was a labour of love! It took me a couple of days to read it, and it was a joy to read! Filled with the colour and allure of different cultures and times, this is a really good read. I definitely hope to read more by this author!

Rating 4.5/5


Kailana Says:

Reason for Reading: Michelle Moran, author of Nefertiti, recommended it, saying that it was her favourite historical fiction novel and I am always looking for a good recommendation.

I read a fair amount of historical fiction, and I have to say, this is one of the more original historical fiction novels I have ever read. Most of the historical fiction that I have read takes place in Canada, the United States, Egypt, or the United Kingdom. This is the first time I have read a historical fiction novel, that I remember, set in 17th-century Persia.

During the 17th-century in this region, it was a male-dominated society. It is still this way in many Middle Eastern countries. In this novel, a young girl watches a comet shoots across the sky, and when it has passed life begins to change for her very drastically. She should have been finding her husband and moving on with her life, but her father dies unexpectedly and suddenly her and her mother have nothing. She has no dowry to find a husband, and they have no one to farm for them, so they are just barely getting by. A kind man comes to the village and asks them if there is anything he can do for them, and the mother implores him to track down her deceased husbands half-brother in the hopes that he will take them in and help them get back on their feet.

When they move from their village to the rather large Isfahan, life changes drastically for her and her mother. Suddenly they are not in control of their own household, and have to take orders from the wife of their father's brother. She is not very sympathetic, and looks upon them as new slaves for her household. She does not really know anything about domestic work, but she does have ideas about how it should be done. They live in riches, but she is always afraid that there will not be enough, so she is always looking for opportunities to gather more wealth for her husband.

Her niece opens up what she hopes will be a great business venture when a wealthy man asks to marry her. It is not a regular wedding, though, the marriage would only last for three months, and then he can request more time with her every three months after that. It could turn into a regular marriage, but in the process she will lose her virginity and this can jeopardize future relationships. It is a chance that her mother is willing to take because it will give her money. Her aunt wants it to happen because it could meet more business for her rug-making husband.

This book is about a girl in a very strict culture wishing for something more. She wants to be a rug-maker like her uncle, but that is not an opportunity that is allowed to women. Her uncle helps her, though, teaching her the tricks of his trade and allowing her to help him. When things get complicated with her marriage arrangement, she must decide on a safe course of action or one where her safety net could disappear. She has to decide whether her own future is more important than the safety the marriage is currently providing her with. This is a book about a girl that dares to break the rules of her society to better herself and live out her dreams.

Parting Thoughts: I loved this book! It was by far one of my favourite reads this year, as I stated in my Thursday Thirteen of favourite reads so far this year. It is a different sort of read for me, and a very worthwhile one at that. Especially considering it is her first novel, I think she did a wonderful job. I look forward to reading more from her and I strongly recommend this book.