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Reading Group Guide

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

0. In the particular emotional realm of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, one¹s ability to live and love depends entirely upon one¹s capacity for forgiveness. Without forgiveness comes tragedy and death, as in the case of Miriam¹s daughter, Sara. With it comes the potential for redemption and even physical healing, as in the cases of Lili and Roxanna. What effect does the act of forgiveness have on the lives of the rest of the novels' characters?
1. "That is how the world really functions," Miriam the Moon tells Lili at the beginning of the novel. ³Human beings are nothing more than the instruments of a callous Fate. Free will and conscious decisions are mere inventions of minds too feeble to accept the reality of our absurd existence.² How does Roxanna the Angel's first-person narrative at the close of the novel -- in which she recognizes all of the choices she "let go to waste" in her life -- complicate and even challenge Miriam's early pronouncement about the futility of faith in free will?
2. Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith has been called a novel of magical realism. While magical realism has been traditionally regarded as a regional literary genre‹restricted to the Latin-American writers who initially popularized it as a literary form -- it is really an international phenomenon with a wide-ranging history. Beyond Gabriel García Márquez, writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, and Jorge Luis Borges have contributed to its far-reaching influence among the literatures of the world. Where does Nahai's brand of magical realism fit into the genre as a whole? What qualities does her work share with other works of magical realism? How is it unique?
3. Beginning in the eighteenth century with the Crow (the Lubovicher rabbi's wife), chart the course of the "bad luck" which Lili is assumed to have inherited from a long line of female ancestors. What was each woman attempting to take flight from? What do each of these women have in common?
4. In the process of describing Roxanna's life toward the end of the novel, Mercedez the Movie Star also offers an insight into her own life's modus operandi: "Your mother was two people forever fighting each other," Mercedez says. "One was the runaway exile she was supposedly destined to become -- the bad-luck woman everyone expected her to be. The other was going to be so good....I used to tell her even then that Destiny is horseshit." To what degree is Mercedez the novel's most strong-willed, self-assured, and genuinely contented woman? On the other hand, what hints does Nahai provide to suggest otherwise?
5. Both Mercedez and Miriam are possessed as young women with bewitching physical beauty. But while Mercedez goes on to trade exclusively on her erotic power as a woman to succeed throughout life, Miriam plainly takes no stock in her beauty -- nor in the conventional role of Iranian women -- even to the point of wearing men's clothing. In spite of these differences -- and in spite of the fact that they despise each other -- what are the essential similarities that exist between Miriam and Mercedez?
6. How do both Mercedez and Miriam use the force of their characters to redress any cultural disadvantages they might have as women? How might one describe Nahai's vision of the balance between the sexes? Compare and contrast Mercedez's remarkable determination to transcend her ghetto childhood with Miriam the Moon's equally strong will to overcome a relentless string of tragedies.
7. One of the primary themes of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith has to do with the nature of escape. Tala'at escapes by running away with Habib's nephew. Effat leaves for Kent with an Englishman. The steel-willed Mercedez, of course, achieves several escapes in succession before finally arriving on Sunset Boulevard and setting up house as Mercedez the Movie Star. By stark contrast, Shusha escapes her misery by drinking a glass of poison. How do the rest of Nahai's characters escape? Which attempts result in failure? Why?
8. Roxanna the Angel's role as a mother is clearly central, but what about her role as wife and lover? What is the legacy of her relationships with Sohrab the Sinner and Teymur the Heretic?
9. In the sense that a work of art is an expression of and an explanation for a particular identity, how might Lili's practice of taking a pen and writing upon the surface of her own body comment upon the nature and function of the artist?
10. In the years after Roxanna's flight, Lili tells us, "I had become invisible to myself and to everyone else." How does Lili react at different points in the novel to this constant feeling of transparency, of being "weightless and unfettered"?
11. Considering the fate of each of her characters, what distinctions, if any, does Nahai seem to be making between the meanings of Œescape' and 'exile'? Between the meanings of 'escape' and 'redemption'? Explain.
12. When Roxanna grows wings and deserts her family in the house on the Avenue of Faith in hopes of thwarting her unacceptable destiny, Lili notes that her mother is "upsetting the balance between dreams and reality." What does she mean? In what ways does the novel as a whole upset the balance between dreams and reality?
13. What is the significance of Shusha's tear jar? By giving the bottle to Roxanna -- "It's the only thing Mother left us" -- what legacy is Miriam symbolically passing on to her sister? Why do you suppose Roxanna's first instinct is to destroy the jar?
14. What other symbols and images emerge and tellingly recur throughout the novel? Consider, for instance, the Caspian Sea, feathers, sapphires, Pari-with-the-Boots, and sunflowers?
15. What are your own memories of 1979, the year of Iran's Islamic Revolution? Looking back after reading Nahai's book, what is your sense of the Western media's perspective on the riots, the movie-theatre fires, the Ayatollah's over-throw of the shah, and the seven-month hostage crisis?
16. If Los Angeles is truly the "land of choices and chances," then what would you say Tehran is the land of?
17. Explaining why she subscribes to National Geographic and Scientific American, Miriam says, "I like to balance experience against science....Experience wins every time." How does this arch statement comment on the entirety of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, and how does it inform and foreshadow the resolution of the novel's considerations of free will and fate?
18. Although Jacob the Jello sees things through a perpetual cloud of opium, how accurate is it to say that he actually sees more clearly than anyone else in the novel? And how does it happen that, even after his death, his visions continue to haunt the inhabitants of the house on the Avenue of Faith?
19. In the course of her novel, Nahai intimately acquaints us with the condition and status of women‹particularly Iranian Jewish women‹in Eastern society. What did you learn from Nahai's novel about Iran's gender politics? What details surprised you in particular?
20. Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith features a range of women who, dissatisfied with the limitations with which their lives have presented them, proceed to reinvent themselves. For instance, Fr¨aulein Claude conceals her past by transforming herself into a worldly, platinum-blonde German who, through the entire course of her marriage, never once lets her husband see her out of makeup or high heels. What is the nature of Alexandra the Cat's transformation? Miriam the Moon's? Mercedez the Movie Star's? How do these various acts of reinvention serve to empower, imprison, or liberate them?

A Conversation with Gina B. Nahai

Q: How much of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith -- a novel about the history of Iran, Jewish persecution, and the ambivalent intersection of Eastern and Western cultures‹ is based upon your own life?

A: "Moonlight" is not autobiographical, but it stems largely from my own memories of Iran and the people I knew as I grew up. Lili's story is not my own, nor is Roxanna my mother. As with all my books, I did a lot of oral history interviews in order to gather these stories, then transcribed them while trying my best to stay true to the voices and the tales I had heard.

Q: One of the things that strikes me most about Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith is your complex, highly ambivalent treatment of Iranian-Jewish exiles in America, a condition rarely dramatized in fiction. Tell us about what you hoped to highlight and emphasize about the nature of exile, and how you feel about the result.

A: More than anything else, the history of the 20th century has been one of exile: the two world wars, and since then the countless regional civil and border wars have created massive movements of people across national lines. As a student of oral history, I have always been fascinated by the idea of exile. My own life experience has also been one of perpetual living "on the outside." In "Moonlight" I pose the question: "What do we lose, and gain, when we go into exile?" My own conclusion has been that exile can be as freeing as it can be devastating.

Q: Do you ever go back to Iran? Do you still have family there?

A: I do still have relatives in Iran, and for a long time after the revolution, I wanted very much to go back and visit. So much time has gone by now, and so much has changed in Iran, that I fear the country I knew is no longer there. I still would very much like to go back and see the changes some day.

Q: What is the significance of the "Moonlight" in your novel's title?

A: Lili loses her mother in moonlight, and she finds her again, at the end when they fly together over Tehran and the house on the Avenue of Faith, in moonlight. It is a metaphor for hope, and for the sacrifices we make in the pursuit of personal choice: it is light that is possible to see only in darkness.

Q: In your novel, you manage to seamlessly combine elements of both reality and fantasy. Your depictions of Iranian political oppression and the rich heritage of familial obligation are imbued with and offset by the constant presence of magic, mythology, and the supernatural. What was behind your decision to tell your story in this manner?

A: Magic and mythology are very much a part of the Iranian sensibility. Many of the stories I tell in "Moonlight" were related to me in exactly the same way, and I thought it was important to stay true to the original version. Beyond that, I feel there is an enduring quality to fairy tales that the other forms of fiction lack. People of all ages and convictions can connect with fairy tales if only they are willing to suspend disbelief and enter the world the writer creates. So I wrote "Moonlight" as a fairy tale, hoping women and men of all nationalities would relate to its universal themes.

Q: Reviewers have repeatedly compared Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith to the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Isabel Allende. Were you particularly influenced by any of these authors? What other writers inspire you?

A: I admire García Márquez tremendously, but magical realism originates before him in the works of Yiddish writers, and even before that in the works of Iranian writers I read as a child. I think my work differs from Borges or Allende's in that I write about history and specific events and facts, that I do a tremendous amount of research for each book and try to portray the repercussions of political events on the lives of ordinary people. In this sense my main inspiration as a writer is Oriana Fallaci -- a reporter who observed the world through objective eyes and then wrote about it as a story. I have also been influenced by Marguerite Duras and the early works of Toni Morrison.

Q: At one point, the characters in the novel tacitly blame the acceleration of Morad the Mercury's death on the shortcomings of Western medicine. Was this perspective of "traditional" medicine a common one at the time?

A: In the early decades of westernization in Iran, there was a sense among some people that everything western and new was superior to what the East had known thus far. Medicine especially was upheld as the great new answer to worldly ills, and American doctors were viewed as nothing short of miracle workers. With these unrealistic expectations, those who embraced western medicine at the expense of everything old and unscientific, were bound for inevitable disappointment when the doctors failed‹as they did in Morad's case‹to deliver miracles.

Q: Fr¨aulein Claude is, perhaps, the most likely to elicit blame from readers. As you were writing, what were your feelings about Fräulein Claude? Did you struggle with her emotions and choices?

A: I was surprised by the reaction readers have had to Fräulein Claude. I saw her as a survivor, a woman who saw necessity to change her destiny and did so by reinventing herself. She was a devoted wife and loving mother, and I say of her, "she was not cruel, Fräulein Claude. She became that way only after she had lost everything that mattered." I can not blame her for her cruelty; it was her way of defending what was hers.

Q: Roxanna is, among other things, a woman struggling to cast off the weight of her past. How successful is she, and indeed any of us, in doing so?

A: I don't thing anyone can cast off their past, but I do think it's possible to reshape our future, and therefore our destiny. This is what Mercedez has done, and what, I hope, Lili will be able to do: scarred as they are by their past, they recognize there is a choice, and therefore avoid falling into the seemingly inevitable "fate" they have been assigned. In Roxanna's case, she makes the mistake of believing there is no choice -- that to avoid bringing bad luck upon her family she must leave them all together. It's only at the end, when Miriam forces her to face her own past, that Roxanna realizes she had other choices.