Tehran at Twilight

August 25, 2014
Abdoh (Opium) returns to his native Iran and adopted New York in a novel about two Iranian-American friends on opposite sides of the political spectrum. After years spent chasing a Ph.D. studying Sufi mystics and serving as an interpreter for one of America’s embedded journalists during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reza Malek accepts a cushy teaching job at a college in Harlem, far from the fray. But when Sina, his reactionary boyhood friend, calls in a favor from Tehran and asks Malek to serve as the legal executor of Sina’s vast estate. Malek journeys back to his childhood home to uphold his end of the bargain. Soon Malek is up to his eyeballs in shady, and potentially life-threatening, dealings, and finds himself being shadowed by a double (or possibly even triple) agent named Fani with an interest in Sina’s real estate holdings. Further complicating matters is a reunion with his long-lost mother who wishes to emigrate to the United States, but is on an Iranian government watch-list. Abdoh paints a gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption. He also uses Malek’s safe life in New York—steeped in stodgy, out-of-touch academia and hemmed in by a typically apathetic American worldview—as an effective counterpoint to the mayhem in the Middle East. Malek’s noble quest to do what’s morally right despite taxing circumstances is captivating.

October 15, 2014
Called back home to Tehran by a mysterious friend with whom he went to Berkeley, an Iranian academic, Malek, is drawn into a world of trouble.Having hoped for greater fortunes with his doctorate in Middle Eastern studies and his experience as an interpreter in Iraq and Afghanistan, Malek has accepted a well-paying but middling-status job teaching "creative reportage" in Harlem. His wealthy friend Sina, who has developed into a rabid anti-American, is now aligned with a reactionary organization in Tehran. Partly out of misguided loyalty and partly out of curiosity, Malek agrees to help him on a mysterious matter involving big money. Against his better judgment, Malek accepts power of attorney over Sina's holdings, making himself a target of shady figures including the double-dealing agent Fani. In post-revolutionary Iran, corruption and violence abound. Reunited with his mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a child, Malek gets even more over his head by trying to get her a passport so she can immigrate to the U.S. The Iranian-born Abdoh (Opium, 2004, etc.), who himself divides his time between New York and Tehran, expertly evokes the tense atmosphere in Tehran and the chaos preceding an election. But the novel is talky, a failing not helped by the flatness of the dialogue, and much of the foreign intrigue seems secondhand.A penetrating look into contemporary Tehran, Abdoh's latest novel is less than satisfying as a thriller.

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September 15, 2014

Reza Malek and his father escaped Tehran before the revolution, settling in California, where Reza attended Berkeley and met his best friend, Sina Vafa. After earning degrees, the two inseparable companions acted as interpreters for war correspondents reporting on the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Americanized Reza published a book about his impressions and received a plum job offer at a college in New York City, while Sina returned to Tehran, a city rife with corruption and political intrigue, to become entangled with a reactionary anti-Western organization. When Sina phones Reza, asking for help, Reza has every reason to say no until Sina reveals that he has found Reza's mother, thought to have abandoned her family 30 years before. Straddling two disparate worlds, Reza struggles to understand his mother's story and his friend's involvement in a treacherous game. VERDICT Abdoh (The Poet Game), codirector of the MFA program in creative writing at City College of New York, gives readers a visceral sense of life in a country where repression is the norm, someone is always watching, and your past is never really past. Recommended for espionage aficionados and for readers who enjoy international settings. [See "Books for the Masses," Editors' BEA Picks, LJ 7/14, p. 30.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

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