The Place of Stones

Structured across a series of discrete moments over time, Hosseini (The Lemon Grove) introduces readers to two rural Iranian families caught up in personal concerns amidst the Iranian revolution. Haydar, a farmer, spends his days quixotically searching for a mythical pearl buried centuries earlier. His brother-in-law and good friend Jamal sees little future in farming and urges his brother, Jaffar, to finish school in the nearby city. When the most powerful local family announces a plan to convert the farmland to a brick factory, Haydar’s agitations to return their land to the people gets him thrown in jail. Jamal, however, quashes his concerns and takes a job to support his wife—Haydar’s sister Golandam—and join the modern world. While these two families (and a complicated network of supporting characters) face these challenges, their village sees the effects of the revolution, including visiting fundamentalist mullahs and demands for volunteers to fight Iraq. Hosseini focuses his narrative on the village—even after major characters leave for cities or the war—and in doing so he offers a powerful look at how outside forces shape rural life. The novel provides a rich sense of time and place, and a recently vanished lifestyle. (Sept.)