Abdolah writes in staccato sentences using a simple vocabulary, and the narration is often heavy-handed. The use of tapestry as a structuring metaphor is too familiar a convention for Abdolah to make it fresh. But he doesn't need to: the reader is skilfully wrapped up in the fabric of semi-autobiographical stories. My Father's Notebook reads like a detective story: information is withheld so that we gradually discover the background to Ishmael's exile.

Like Orhan Pamuk's Snow, the novel portrays the sense of rootlessness in the secular west and the religious oppression of Islamic countries. But unlike Pamuk's unrelentingly dark brooding, Abdolah leaves pockets of cheerfulness, such as a hilarious anecdote about Ishmael dressed up and dancing like a Parisian schoolboy, mocking the westernising shah.