Unfamiliar with human society, Zal eats birdseed and insects, squats atop the newspaper he sleeps upon, and communicates only in the squawks and shrieks of the other pet birds around him. Freed from his cage and adopted by a behavioral analyst, Zal awakens in New York to the possibility of a future. A friendship with a famous illusionist who claims-to the Bird Boy's delight-that he can fly and a romantic relationship with a disturbed artist who believes she is clairvoyant send Zal's life spiraling into chaos.
Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with devastation. In tones haunting yet humorous and unflinching yet reverential, The Last Illusion explores the powers of storytelling while investigating contemporary and classical magical thinking. Its potent lyricism, stylistic inventiveness, and examination of otherness can appeal to readers of Salman Rushdie and Helen Oyeyemi. This ambitious, exciting literary adventure is at once grotesque, amusing, deeply sad-and wonderful, too.
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In a gripping, sinuous, sometimes explosive voice, Porochista Khakpour tell us a story like no other, with a protagonist like no other-and there is not a reader who will not remember him always. The English language has a new master tickler and it is laughing out loud. A haunting novel that lingers long after the last page. As much a coming-of-age story as it is a clear-eyed account of our contemporary lives. This is a work of pure imagination.
Powerful, passionate, essential work! We invite you to read it--and help us figure out how one writer can take such a subject and spin it into something you just want to wrap yourself in. Khakpour's writing walks a line between mythical and realistic, somehow melding the two seamlessly and keeping reality in sharp focus; the reader aches for Zal, who fumbles through life as neither completely bird nor completely human.
This novel is a literary gem full of sadness, guts, and wonder. For any adult who enjoys good fiction. Rescued by a behavioral analyst, Zal awakens in New York to the possibility of a future. A stunted and unfit adolescent, he strives to become human as he stumbles toward adulthood. A friendship with a famous illusionist who claims--to the Bird Boy's delight--that he can fly and an affair with a disturbed artist who believes she is clairvoyant send Zal's life spiraling into chaos.
Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with devastation. Hardcover , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Last Illusion , please sign up. See 2 questions about The Last Illusion…. Lists with This Book. May 20, C. Well that was equal parts whimsical and thoroughly befuddling. I am just having a little "I don't really get it or understand how the storylines connect or what the heckity heck it was trying to say" moment. I think it's a very peculiar book that will either work for you enormously or not really.
I loved Zal to absolute pieces and reading about a recovering feral-child was intensely interesting. Plus I think it had a spot on accurate representation of depression. I wasn't sure how the illusions connected. It was centred around September 11th, which I always find frighteningly sickening to read about. And there was this illusionist guy who kind of knew Zal and Zal's girlfriend was predicting terrible things and??? Because not ever book is for everyone. So let's focus on the good parts, yes?!? He sneaks candied insect snacks and he loves birds and never eats them.
And I was like pretty terrified about Zal's mental health which was Which brings me to what I struggled with: Zal's abhorrence at being different.
Completely broke my heart. Like he forcibly made himself do things that weren't natural to him. And like how he tortured himself to do things he hated just to kill the "bird" part of himself. It was really anxiety-inducing to read him being like that omg. Be the good pure precious bean I know you can be. I don't even get what his storyline was on about.
I also lowkey hated the romance, but I think that was the point that it wasn't a healthy or balanced relationship.
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I wanted the best for him omg and I'm still not tooootally sure what the ending meant??? But I do wish he'd embraced being different and hadn't tried to kill that side of himself. AND I do wish the writing style hadn't been so blatantly tell tell tell. But I was still enthralled and I loved the whimsy and desperation and honest brutality of the story.
Don't be like me: View all 3 comments. Feb 20, Lolly K Dandeneau rated it it was amazing. This novel is far more than it's summary. It is a beautiful tangle of myth, love, magic, and illusion giving the reader one wonderful story. Zal begins his life in a cage, after his mother horrified by his pale skin and hair treats him like a bird. He is 'rescued' by his sister only to later come into the care of an adoptive American father and so begins the quest of normalcy for our feral little man.
His dreaming in bird is inventively creative and Zal's struggle to be 'like the rest of us' i This novel is far more than it's summary. His dreaming in bird is inventively creative and Zal's struggle to be 'like the rest of us' is painful and funny. Porochista Khakpour has a unique voice and is one talented story teller. I can't wait for more from her. The tender mess of his love life is easy to relate to, even if you aren't a feral human. There is a mix of 'madness' that is also clairvoyant truth in his girlfriend Asiya, as her premonitions lead her into trouble and also become a heavy weight in our troubled Zal.
She is good for him, she is bad for him and isn't that the story of many love lives? I am reluctant to go into too much detail before this release I had the pleasure of reading an ARC but I will leave you with lines from this gifted writer. What a stupid human. I highly recommend this book! Mar 26, Edan rated it really liked it.
I read this book in two days while at Ucross, an artists' residency in beautiful northeast Wyoming. This was the perfect setting to read this novel because, 1. Because I had hours to do with what I wanted, and what I wanted was to write for a couple of hours, and then read for a couple I read this book in two days while at Ucross, an artists' residency in beautiful northeast Wyoming.
Because I had hours to do with what I wanted, and what I wanted was to write for a couple of hours, and then read for a couple of hours, write and then read, until bedtime. I fell into this book immediately and I loved Zal, the man who was raised as a bird by his uncaring mother. Khakpour's prose is exuberant and free-wheeling and so fuck-you-I-am-writing-this-nutty-paragraph-and-you-will-giggle-with-delight. It's fearless in this way that I admire greatly.
It's also an engaging read--the first day I read pages in a sitting and loved being absorbed in this imaginative world. I was less enamored with the magician, Silber, and that subplot--it felt less immediate and more It's all very fun to read, but it didn't move me in the way that the book's other parts did. The ending didn't quite land for me either, though it never stopped being compelling. I was moved and taken with the book overall. I want everyone to read it so we can discuss!
The Last Illusion may be one of the most frustrating, incomprehensible books I've ever read. The first half is written in an awkward, stilted, and detached writing style that keeps the reader at an unmanageable distance from the characters. This isn't a criticism; I actually enjoyed the mythical style once I thought I had figured out what Khakpour was doing.
But suddenly, the second half switched to an overwrought, occasionally-experimental, emotional writing style that mistakenly assumed the re The Last Illusion may be one of the most frustrating, incomprehensible books I've ever read. But suddenly, the second half switched to an overwrought, occasionally-experimental, emotional writing style that mistakenly assumed the reader had been in these characters' heads all along The Last Illusion keeps secrets for no reason at all. Asiya's pseudo-prophetic, end-of-the-world screeds are presented as some revelation we're all dying to find out—the failure here is that we know what happened on September 11, Further, the "secret" of Bran Silber's last illusion didn't create suspense so much as frustration with the lame payoff.
Something about literal smoke and mirrors.
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Khakpour was so worried about symbolism and dramatics that she couldn't be bothered to bring the final scenes to life. I think she just wanted to get to that final line. Khakpour was so focused on the character development of Zal that she completely neglected the rest; as a result, every other character felt extraneous. None of the characters felt alive or real. Each secondary character got, at max, scenes exclusively from their point of view, and that was somehow supposed to serve as character development.
Either write from multiple points of view, or don't. Leave characters as mysteries, or develop them. Hendricks and Rhodes, supposedly the paternal figures in Zal's life, are commonly referred to as his "paternal figures," as if that in itself imbues some sort of meaning. Silber is just a giant stereotype of quirk whose only point seemed to be for Khakpour to think up more and more ridiculous "Silberisms. The emotional connection between Zal and Silber was never completely laid out, and I never had that "aha!
I also never bought the connection between Zal and Willa; she apparently meant a lot to him, operated as a surrogate mother figure, but didn't seem to have any sort of influence over him unless she was in the room. Khakpour has talent and a boatload of creativity—there are some beautiful passages and vibrant ideas here. What she fails at is making characters come alive, making them have believable interactions, making us feel with and for them. Though I hardly stress it in works across the board, in a coming-of-age tale and I know this was a coming-of-age tale because Hendricks literally told Zal he had come of age—subtle , characterization is the most important thing to nail down.
Unfortunately, Khakpour did not make it work here. This was nothing like I imagined it to be. Definitely one of the most disappointing reads of the year so far. This book follows a young Iranian boy who has been kept in a birdcage by his mother. At the beginning of the novel he is rescued from his ten-year long prison and taken from Iran to New York where he is adopted by a behavioural analyst. We then see his VERY speedy recovery - some how he manages to reclaim his posture, speech and can function pretty well in human company.
The book then det This was nothing like I imagined it to be. The book then details his life as a young man and the struggles he is going through, we see him trying to make friends and battling with his inner 'bird' instincts. At this point the book was verging on the side of boring and I couldn't see where the author was going with the strange addition of bizarre 'friends' for the young man. This novel was all over the place, I don't really know what the author was trying to do!
It was like she was trying to squeeze in as many things as possible and ended up doing a bad job of it all. It's not a fave anymore, and I've definitely seen thing this novel did done better other places. So, bringing this one down just a bit. I was hoping I would love this book, going into it, but it absolutely blew me away. This story was so incredibly unique, gripping, sort of beautiful, and horrific. In this story we follow a feral child named Zal, who was born as an albino in Iran, where his mother believed he was a demon and locked him in a bird cage throughout his developmental years.
The story really begins when Zal has grown into an adult - after years of therapy to teach him speech and how humans think, and many surgeries to correct his deformed body, he believes he is ready to become "normal. We watch him struggle to understand everything as he gets his first girlfriend - and that, kissing might be nice, but it is considered cheating if you kiss someone who isn't your girlfriend. And finally, we see him as he spirals into a place where he doesn't know where to go from, how to get back on his feet, and where he is mostly just depressed and unknowing what to do with his life.
I've personally never a fictional story about feral children, so the plot was incredibly unique. Getting inside this character's head - who so badly wanted to be normal, even though he still dreamed of flying, ate bugs like a bird would, and struggled to have sex with his girlfriend due to his asexuality - was so incredibly interesting. I personally didn't particularly like Zal - his thought process could be very But, I also thought this was really the only way to show how different he really was to normal human beings because he didn't understand, yet, what was normal and what was not.
We got Zal - the "bird boy. We got Willa - Asiya's sister who was so overweight she couldn't get out of bed, but who Zal thought was beautiful because she, like him, was considered a "freak. We got Hendricks - the caring father figure who had adopted Zal and always wanted to do what was right for him. One of the only issues I had with the character development was the fact that Zal was asexual, but forced himself to not be because that was one of the things that made him weird or a "freak.
I'm a very fast reader, but this was a novel even though I did read it in like, 2 days that I really took my time with and read every single word of, and had to take breaks from reading every once in a while to just absorb everything. Porochista Khakpour just has a way with words. She doesn't go on and on with metaphors which I, personally, HATE in books, when they have so many metaphors that you barely know what the real meaning is and she was very direct with telling what was going on and people's backstories.
Yet, she beautifully developed each and every character in SUCH a realistic way. Her writing wasn't poetic, but it was whimsical and beautiful in a very simple way. It had such a great balance between the New York City, romance, finding-yourself type plot mixed with the Iran legends of Zal - the bird man, and who our main protagonist was named after. I never really cared before about humor, but I've been loving just those certain snarky, witty remarks from characters or just ridiculous situations. Like when Zal worked at a pet store and kept taking out a bird to play with - he tried to hide it in his coat, bring it with him to the bathroom, and eventually set it free and was then fired, obviously.
But, to balance out the humor, this book had incredibly REAL and relevant topics - such as panic and anxiety disorders, rape, homosexuality and trying to discover yourself and get yourself on your feet. The ending of this book absolutely took me by surprise.
The Last Illusion review – Porochista Khakpour’s audacious coming-of-age novel
About pages in, I must say, I was sitting there wondering what the plot of this book really was. Even though it wasn't very plot-driven, I never found myself bored, but I WAS wondering how on earth it was going to end. I started putting pieces together about pages in or so, during Asiya and Zal's anniversary date, and from there, it was obvious where the book was headed, and when I realized I was like "wait, whaaaaaaaaaat?? Which I am going to say in this spoiler area: I highly recommend it for my Murakami, magical realism, postmodern lovers.
This is definitely not for younger readers due to the abundance of explicit sex scenes. Oct 09, Jalilah rated it really liked it Shelves: Labelling this book as magical realism or fantasy is somewhat misleading.
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Although the premise seems fantastical, Zal, the protagonist of this book is abandoned by his mother and raised in a cage with other birds having no contact with humans until he is 10, and in real life there have been no feral children raised by birds, this book is otherwise more on the realistic side. However what makes this book mythic is the fact that Zal is named after a character in the Persian Shahnameh, or Book of K Labelling this book as magical realism or fantasy is somewhat misleading. However what makes this book mythic is the fact that Zal is named after a character in the Persian Shahnameh, or Book of Kings who is also abandoned by his parents and raised by a giant white bird.
Zal from Shahnameh ends up becoming one of the greatest warriors of Persian legends. The Zal in this book is adopted by the American psychologist and specialist in feral children Anthony Hendricks and brought to live in New York City. The feeling is more like a coming of age story with Zal striving to find himself and become human. I found Zal very endearing, the writing compelling and the story highly moving. The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is I found the illusionist character to be boring and unnecessary in the plot.
Fortunately in spite of the fact that the book is called The Last Illusion, the illusionist character really only has a small role in the story.
The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for something different! Jul 17, Ksenia Anske rated it it was amazing. Could a boy be a bird? Could a bird be a boy? Could a boy be raised by birds? Or by his own mother, stuck in a cage, with no place to move and no sound to utter and no embrace to receive, hailed as the White Demon?
Could a Persian myth be a story played out in New York of ? That awful September month? That day, the 11th? And it could rivet you to your seat, or to the floor, or to the wall, or wherever it is you would be reading this book, perhaps perched on the edge of yo Could a boy be a bird? It will make you lovesick and it will make your eyes overflow and your feelings tangle and your dreams perhaps run over themselves, and all of it swooping on you in a feathery cacophony, dazzling you with a set of characters you can't imagine having anything in common.
Could you pack so much darkness and love in the same book and swirl it with colors and mythology and deep rich history and yet make it almost a fable of the modern time? But, I am boring you. The story evolves around Zal Hendricks born in Iran to a woman who declares him a White Demon due to his fair skin and stuffs him in a bird cage and raises him that way until he is rescued and brought to US by his new father, an analyst studying feral children.
Like, fighting his urges to eat bugs, for example, or to fly, or wondering who he is and what is he to do. What do normal humans do. What is it all? What does it mean? The story is a parallel to the Book of Kings, the Persian epic Shahnameh about an albino hero taken away by a giant bird after he was abandoned and raised by it, only to return later to the world of men and to become a great warrior.
And, every sentence is a gem. A lollipop you suck and it never ends. Feb 02, Owen rated it really liked it Shelves: Zal was raised as a bird, but he isn't really a bird. He is a boy, but only in the physical sense. Trapped in a cage for the first ten years of his life by an abusive mother for having light skin, his siblings were the other caged birds, from whom he learned how to be a bird.
When he is eventually released, a team of developmental psychologists and scientists specializing in feral children help him learn normal human ways. From there, he has to master the world like anyone else. Along the way he Zal was raised as a bird, but he isn't really a bird.