The Last Illusion: a Novel by Porochista Khakpour These Discussion Questions Are Designed to Enhance Your Group's Conversation
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The Last Illusion: A Novel By Porochista Khakpour These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation. About this book In a rural Iranian village, Zal’s demented mother, horrified by the pallor of his skin and hair, becomes convinced she has given birth to a “white demon.” She hides him in a birdcage and there he lives for the next decade. 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. An emotionally stunted and physically unfit adolescent, he strives to become human as he stumbles toward adulthood, but his persistent dreams in “bird” and his secret penchant for candied insects make real conformity impossible. As New York survives one potential disaster, Y2K, and begins hurtling toward another, 9/11, Zal finds himself in a cast of fellow outsiders. 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. A celebrated essayist and chronicler of the 9/11- era, Khakpour reimagines New York’s most harrowing catastrophe with a dazzling homage to her beloved city. For discussion 1. What is the significance of the book’s title, The Last Illusion? What is the “last illusion” of Zal’s life? 2. To what extent does Zal’s story in The Last Illusion mirror his namesake’s story in the Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings? 3. In Part I, what is the significance of the word considering and its constant repetition, both in its utterance to Zal and within his own mind? 4. How alike are Silber and Zal? 5. What does Silber see as the difference(s) between a “trick” and an “illusion”? What’s the importance of the distinction? 6. Why did the author choose to frame the novel between two specific events, Y2K and 9/11? 7. Throughout the novel, Zal often has to remind himself that he is “a man, not a bird” (93). At what point, if any, do you think Zal finally sees himself as more man than bird? 8. How does Zal define love? How does his definition change over time? 9. What appeal does Asiya hold for Zal? In Zal’s eyes, how does her appeal differ from Willa’s? 10. Zal is fixated on the idea of normalcy. How does he define what it means to be normal? 11. Why does Zal become obsessed with physical sexuality? Where does his homosexual episode at Asiya’s exhibition fit into this equation? 12. To what extent do Hendricks and Rhodes help and harm Zal in his journey to “become a man” (289, 296)? 13. Why is Zal unable to leave or forget Asiya? 14. Who is the most tragic character in the novel? Why? 15. What is the significance of Zal’s inability to smile? Why is he finally able to smile at the book’s end? Suggested reading Karen Russell, Swamplandia!; Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children; Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird; Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners; Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea; José Donoso, The Obscene Bird of Night; Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children; Roxane Gay, An Untamed State; Teju Cole, Open City; Yiyun Li, Kinder Than Solitude; Emma Donoghue, Room; Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears; Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leaf Storm; Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King Porochista Khakpour’s debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice, one of the Chicago Tribune’s Fall’s Best, and the 2007 California Book Award winner in the First Fiction category. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Ucross, and Yaddo. Her nonfiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Harper’s, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Slate, and Salon, among many others. Khakpour currently teaches at Columbia University’s M.F.A. program, Fordham University, and Wesleyan University. She lives in New York City. .