City of Lies
Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran
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- HUF2,190.00
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- HUF2,190.00
Publisher Description
'Timely and beautifully written' Sunday Times
'Phenomenal. An extraordinary insight into a country barely known - an often feared - by the West' Vogue
'Utterly compelling' Daily Mail
'Gripping, a dark, delicious unveiling . . . Deeply researched yet as exciting as a novel' Simon Sebag Montefiore
Welcome to Tehran, a city where survival depends on a network of subterfuge. Here is a place where mullahs visit prostitutes, drug kingpins run crystal meth kitchens, surgeons restore girls' virginity and homemade porn is sold in the sprawling bazaars; a place where ordinary people are forced to lead extraordinary lives.
Based on extensive interviews, CITY OF LIES chronicles the lives of eight men and women drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society and reveals what it is to live, love and survive in one of the world's most repressive regimes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Navai, an award-winning journalist, examines a wide range of Tehranis in this collection of beautifully written profiles. She observes the lives of impoverished families as well as the "upper-crust." Her subjects often "composite character" based on several people span from young housewives to navigators of the underworld. They include a woman who is sold twice, first by her drug-addicted parents, then by her debtor husband, and another woman who watches morality police shut down her dancing class. When a man agrees to meet with a cryptic stranger, he finds himself face to face with the judge whose sentence destroyed his family but who now pleads for his forgiveness. Navai is especially drawn to tales of comeuppance, but she wisely balances violence and drama with domestic frustrations, fragmented marriages, opium addiction, and struggles with religious and cultural identity. The writing is filled with novelistic detail, but the beauty of the prose offers minor relief from the cruelties described. Navai asserts that, for all its complexities, Tehran the city of her birth is a place that she loves.
