Tehran at Twilight in Around the World in 80 Books

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Jan 23, 2015 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels, setting-middle-east, thriller

This is a tough book to write about because it's kind of packaged as a thriller, but it isn't really one -- or rather, isn't a thriller in the sense most people think of the genre. It's a lot more quiet, subtle, and meditative than that -- it's really more about exile, friendship, family, and showing how life in Iran really works. The story revolves around Reza, an Iranian-American whose moved to California as a teen after the 1979 revolution, went to Berkeley and got a PhD, then worked as a tra This is a tough book to write about because it's kind of packaged as a thriller, but it isn't really one -- or rather, isn't a thriller in the sense most people think of the genre. It's a lot more quiet, subtle, and meditative than that -- it's really more about exile, friendship, family, and showing how life in Iran really works. The story revolves around Reza, an Iranian-American whose moved to California as a teen after the 1979 revolution, went to Berkeley and got a PhD, then worked as a translator throughout the Middle East, and is now a middle-aged journalism professor on year-to-year contracts at a Fordham-like school in New York City. When his closest friend from Berkeley asks him to come to Tehran, he gets embroiled in a convoluted scheme involving the friend's potentially vast inheritance of property seized during the revolution. Meanwhile, Reza becomes friends with a former US Marine officer who joins the faculty at his school, and also gets tangled up in the plans of an ambitious American journalist he used to translate for.

The inheritance is more or less a MacGuffin to draw Reza to Tehran and give the characters some stakes. But the story's real aim is to show the reader just how much of what happens in Iran, and the Middle East in general, is about money and power, rather than religion and beliefs. Every conversation Reza has is a veiled negotiation, and behind every player are untold layers of other players, and within every scheme are three others. Where a conventional thriller would have the hero discover all this in wide-eyed shock and suspense along the way, the strength of this book is that Reza knows all this and recognizes that he can only play the game within certain margins and only push so far before things get very dangerous. This all happens among an array of colorful characters -- from a semi-official minder/fixer who may or may not be working for the Iranian government and/or intelligence, to functionary thugs, a mysterious Afghan crime boss, and even the jetsetting, yoga-loving, elite of the city.

Meanwhile, Reza is constantly recalibrating his relationship with the old friend who dragged him into all this. The friend may or may not be involved in some kind of murky quasi-terrorist group operating in Iraq, and may or may not have found religion along the way. Readers who need everything clearcut are advised to stay away, since the whole point of the book is that notions of set ideology, allegiance, or belief are laughably naive in Tehran. In contrast to this is Reza's ex-Marine friend, who is a real American hero who grew disenchanted with the war and dropped out. Although his internal code of honor is naive to Reza, it is also the one true good thing he can point to as cause for hope.

Along with the aforementioned plot lines, there is another involving Reza's long-lost mother, and an entirely separate strand involving her dying neighbor, who came to Tehran as a Polish refugee during World War II. This latter element is well handled, and yet feels largely shoehorned in to share the remarkable story of how 115,000 Polish refugees came from the USSR to Iran during World War II. So, there's a lot going on in a relatively few pages -- and at times it can get a little busy and distracting. Still, this is an excellent and thoughtful book that will do more to give a reader a sense and feel for contemporary Iran than any number of long articles in the Times or Economist.
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