What did you think about the section of the novel told from Leila's father's perspective? Did this account help you better understand his attitudes and behavior?

What did you think about the section of the novel told from Leila's father's perspective? Did this account help you better understand his attitudes and behavior?

While the sudden shift of perspective was a bit jarring at first, it did help to explain his trauma and therefore how he saw things, and lived.

Perhaps if he had told his family what he endured they would have supported him more, just seeing the damage to the flesh and no explanation has to have sent bizarre feeling in them

I was glad to read the father's experience. It was truly horrifying and would certainly scar him for life. I think it kept him from being close to others and building a wall around himself.

Learning about the father's experience helped me to understand his attitude toward everything. I think he should have told his family so they could have understood him better, why he withdrew from life for the most part. He had a terrible experience.

Learning about Leila’s fathers experience explained why he held certain views. In reading the descriptions about his scars, you were left wondering how or why. With his explanation, you can understand why.

It did explain some of his behavior but also the male domination culture played some part in it

It definitely helped me to understand his character more and really put his life into perspective. Considering all he had been through, I thought he did the best that he could in being a father to Leila and Chia.

I think that including that chapter about the father was very important in informing the reader specifically that the father's experience was not an isolated one. It was in fact one in a long line of injustices carried out against Kurds from one generation to the next, from one place to another. The horror that the father witnessed as a Kurdish child growing up in Iraq, later followed him and his people when they moved to Iran believing it would be a better place to live, only to find that he, and other Kurds were persecuted, tortured and thrown in jail.

With the informing of his backstory, it made his actions more understandable to readers. His family would have known that he was tortured and were well aware of the persecution against the Kurds in Iran and elsewhere in the region since they lived it too.

It really pictured what the Kurds had to do to survive. Still have to do?

It really helped me understand him better. It did feel a bit off to jump to a different person's perspective but I was glad the author did it. That part of the story would not have had as big of an impact if the father had been telling Chia or Lelia about it. In another section, I did like how part of the Father's story was presented by the father telling it to Chia while Lelia listened from another room. It really emphasized the separate place women play in Kurdish culture and since most of the book is from Lelia's perspective, it was a way to change that perspective.

It was a bit jarring in that I wasn't sure who this person was. Only after I read it was I seeing that it was the father's experience. That section was very powerful and horrifying. I'm curious to ask the author if this experience was recorded in Kurdish history, as in, did it actually happen? I'm looking for more books on the Kurdish people. Any recommendations from anyone?

It seemed likely typical of the culture that the father would not reveal his feelings and experiences to the children, especially the daughter, and likely more so in a culture that does not value females as we may think that they should. I remember thinking, "What?? Couldn't that have been said a long time ago?"

I agree with Lorrained that it’s part of their culture that especially daughters don’t need an explanation. Now in thinking about it again maybe it also was too painful to talk about it and as a man he was supposed to be strong and handle everything.

I thought his perspective important in understanding his behavior and in particular, his emotional (and physical) isolation from his family. Sadly, in spite of his strong feelings concerning the terrible mistreatment of his people, his anger did not extend to the mistreatment of Kurdish women or any group of women in the Middle East.

I agree with bookfabulous. I cannot imagine enduring what Alan witnessed as a child or how he suffered in prison and after his release. It also explains his obsession with following the news and his desire for a more just life for the Kurds. Later in the book, I found it interesting that he said he did not leave his marriage because of his children. Even though he was not very present in their lives, they were immensely important to him. He did not want them to be harmed.

It was important not only to understand Alan and who he was but to understand what the Kurds had to endure

I thought it was an important part of the book and I'm glad we got a small glimpse into his life and thoughts. I enjoyed the resolution at the end of the book where he starts his first ever email to his daughter.

I guess I’m more cynical it seemed like he was saying she’s done good so she’s my daughter again.

It was important to include his perspective in the novel because he had such a major influence on Leila's life. When she tells Joanna that it was so hard for her to love parents that didn't know how to love, you can feel the tremendous impact that his life had on her. At this time she was ready to leave for Canada and she was still trying to understand this man. Perhaps if he had shared the horrors of his life, she would feel free to begin living her own life. I felt Joanna understood him best when she said he had been depressed his whole life.

I actually thought Leila took her own life and that the switch was going to be how the book was written. That we would get the perspective of each of the family members. But that obviously wasn't what the author was up to. The father's history was heart breaking and it did make him more real and human and understandable. But I still wrestle with the fact that he disowned Leila, especially after what his live had been like. He should have been more excepting. I almost wish there was something similar for the mother because she seemed really unforgivable in her relationship with her daughter.

I lost most of my kind feelings for the father, not because he disowned her but when all was forgotten when she did something good.