The House of the Mosque (Dutch; Flemish: Het huis van de moskee) is a Dutch-language novel by Iranian writer Kader Abdolah, published in 2005. The English language translation of The House of the Mosque was published in January 2010.[1]
The book follows the life of an Iranian family from 1969 on through the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the installment of the Khomeini government, and ends after Khomeini's death. The story is a "semi-mythical narrative ... bearing a 'flying carpet' element of fantasy" that is countered by the horrifying events that the protagonists face as the revolution progresses.[2]
Most of the plot takes place in a large (36-room) house attached to the Friday mosque in Senejan, three hours by train from Qom, a fictionalized version of Senjan, now a district of Arak, Iran. Kader Abdolah was born and grew up in a similar house in that city.[3] [4] In the presentation of real historical events, many names and locations are altered, so that the novel does not pretend to be an accurate description of the historical situation.[1] The main character is Aqa Jaan ("Dear Master", a title often given to the male head of a household in Iran).[4] Shahbal, the son of his blind cousin who is the muezzin of the mosque, personifies the author (Shahbal is called the "narrator" of the story in the cast of characters). Like Shahbal, Kader Abdolah was active in leftist underground political movements in the time of the Shah and of Khomeini, and fled Iran in 1985 to settle in the Netherlands. Unlike Shahbal, the author did not kill anyone, but instead avenged the murders of his brother and sister with his pen.[3] For example, before fleeing Iran, Shahbal killed Khalkhal, a fictionalized version of Khomeini's "hanging judge" Sadeq Khalkhali, but the real Khakhali died of old age in 2003.
The House of the Mosque primarily explores the lifestyle of a traditional, extended Iranian family and how they coped with the changes brought by the Westernization of Iran until 1979, the revolution and the subsequent radicalization. Additionally, the book portrays struggles between the leaders of the bazaar and the religious rule of the imams—and between family members who are traditionalists and those who are caught up in revolutionary ideas and do not follow the old rules of the house.