The New Angel

You know what this poem means Bahram? It s about love, and loneliness. The reed is cut off from the other reeds. So it wants to return, but it can't. So it cries instead, and every time someone blows into the reed flute, it s the sad song of the reed s loneliness that makes people cry, the sad story of its loneliness and yearning for love.

The New Angel is the moving story of Bahram and Fereshteh (Persian for angel) growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. At its heart it is a love story between two adolescents at odds with the society in which they live and of the ways in which our lives can be changed forever by external events over which we have no control.

The author lived in Iran until the age of 14 before migrating to Australia. Alizadeh writes superbly of the pains and beauties of adolescence and the devastating ways in which catastrophic events can shape out thoughts and actions. Bahram and Fereshteh capture our hearts, and ultimately break them. The New Angel engages and disturbs the reader as it moves with suspense and purpose towards its startling climax.

"Alizadeh is a rare writer. He expresses his contemporary thinking in a beautiful, lyrical prose as well as in the poetry of the past. The New Angel is at once provocative and enjoyable, an explosive debut novel that is destined to divide opinion" - GEORGE PAPAELLINAS, author of Ikons and No.