Tehran at Twilight
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
An Iranian American returns home to help a friend and finds his life in danger: "Remarkable . . . a smart, eloquent novel." —Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz
The year is 2008. Reza Malek's life is modest but manageable—he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometimes lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men.
But after a terse phone call from his best friend in Iran, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, he finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend is embroiled with Shia militants; and his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off before the revolution, is alive and well—while his own life is now in danger.
Against a backdrop of corrupt clerics, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, this novel offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a riveting morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty.
"[A] swift, hard-boiled novel . . . Shadowy zealots exist everywhere, whether in conference rooms or interrogation rooms or—most often—in rooms that can serve as both." —TheNew York Times Book Review
"A gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption." —Publishers Weekly
"A smart political thriller." —Laila Lalami, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Moor's Account
"Gives readers a visceral sense of life in a country where repression is the norm . . . Recommended for espionage aficionados and for readers who enjoy international settings." —Library Journal
"A fascinating glimpse of contemporary Iran through the familiar story of childhood friends whose paths are beginning to diverge irreversibly." —Shelf Awareness
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
