I had chosen to write about Dr. Majid Rafizadeh’s phenomenal novel  ‘  A God Who Hates Women’. It is a beautiful yet tragically moving story of a women caught in a patriarchal household. It takes us back to the times when women were seen as commodities sold off in markets. Choice was a word that women could not even imagine.

The story highlights the life of the authors mother, how she lived through oppression. This story forms around the background of a civil war. The novels throw light on the cruelties faced by  women in a patriarchal society. The story begins with a short background of how the authors grandmother was born. It later shows the birth of the authors mother which turned out to be a disgrace for her own mother, since she expected a baby boy. The story continues with the atrocities faced by his mother at her own home and how she was forcefully married to a man who abused her at all chances he got.  The story speaks mostly about the struggles faced by the authors mother in her journey. It shows the cruel side of patriarchy, how women carry it down more than men.

The book is set in the backdrop of a series of political tension in Syria and Iran. The author and his family have moved from Syria to Iran a couple of times and the book shows the difference in the culture in both the countries vividly. The book shows how much political leaders are influenced by religion and how they kill people cruelly who goes against them, the authors father was one such victim. Maybe the author might have also got the influence from his father, but in a much better way. The author was the founder of an organization on human rights which reported cases of human cruelty. The authors father has a very interesting character, he on one side focuses on how modern our thinking should be in various aspects of life except in the equal treatment of women. His character was rather paradoxical.

The name of the book also seems to bring out the story, about how the religion and its god were cruel to women. The people of the religion went to extreme ends to make sure that the rules of the religion are followed, sometimes inhumane practices were also used.

But one of the most important thing that the book has left out is that it hasn’t brought into consideration the larger issues faced by the people. The author has merely had an interview with the close members of his family and friends. And so we cannot really say that the book speaks about the whole of Syria. After certain parts of time in the book, it fails to show the feelings of Amira, the authors mother. How she felt about religion, her passion and how she lied to herself to live for her children. The authors life has been glossed over for most parts and it talks in the perspective of the author while the book was about his mother. More focus should have been given to her as well as the political conditions too.