Out of Mesopotamia

Starred review from July 20, 2020
Abdoh (Tehran at Twilight) delivers a superb pressure cooker of a novel centered on Saleh, a middle-aged Iranian journalist with one bum eye who splits his time between Tehran and covering the war on ISIS. In Tehran, he pulls in cushy art review gigs while navigating the cutthroat, overtly patriotic TV industry, where his script ideas are often compromised or stolen; while on the front line in Iraq and Syria, he embeds with coalition soldiers and mourns those who die in battle. Saleh is surrounded by a web of characters in both halves of his life, among them a security handler, H, who tests Saleh’s loyalty and sends him on a clandestine mission involving a text by Marcel Proust, and Atia, a friend who tries to recruit Saleh for a new magazine. When fellow journalist Saeed finds him in Iraq, Saeed insists Saleh is sabotaging their careers by protecting a woman known as Zahra the Beheader, who took revenge on the men who killed her family, and whose story the British media wants to buy from them. Meanwhile, aging artist Miss Homa, tired of life, asks Saleh to assist in her suicide. In chapters that shuffle Saleh around Syria and Iraq, Abdoh vibrantly illustrates the futilities and dangers of proxy conflict. As Saleh juggles his various objectives and dilemmas, he confronts his own desire for meaning (“In this war, nothing—nothing at all—made sense”). Abdoh brilliantly fuses the confusions of combat and modern life to produce an unforgettable novel. This is one of the best works of literature on the war against ISIS to date.

August 1, 2020
Iranian journalist Saleh is embedded on the front lines of Iraq and Syria with troops battling the Islamic State in Abdoh's searing, poetic, and morally authentic account of contemporary conflict. Abdoh eloquently depicts the absurdity of war, employing darkly comic interludes while also showing the devastating brutality as friends and colleagues are killed or maimed during seemingly pointless missions. In addition to his assignments in the field, Saleh is also forced to write for the state-sponsored hit TV show, Abbas, about a renowned sniper turned national hero. Descriptions of the show's story line, which provide incisive and blistering commentaries on the conflict, also reveal essential truths about the nature of narrative, cultural politics, and history. The theme of memory is also threaded through the story as Saleh uncovers a copy of Proust buried during a firefight. As Saleh contemplates the human desire for meaning and how this informs a willingness for martyrdom, he is baffled by the irony of humankind's propensity for repeating the same mistakes throughout history. A devastatingly profound catch-22 of modern conflict.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 1, 2020

Saleh is a middle-aged art critic for a Tehran newspaper whose life has grown meaningless. Approaching the world with a cynicism verging on despair and looking for renewed purpose, he joins up with a Shia militia fighting ISIS, chronicling the lives of "martyred" soldiers and sometimes engaging in the action. He discovers something he needs in the bravery of his comrades (however foolish it may sometimes be), the idealism of the soon-to-be martyrs, and even the boredom and utter absurdity of his ragtag military life. While on the front, he finds a volume of Proust--subversive literature in Iran--and buries it where he is stationed. When it's discovered, word gets back to his government handler H., arousing more suspicion about his loyalty even as H. demands that he write a patriotic drama for state TV. If that's not enough, Atia, the woman he loves, breaks his heart by marrying their boss. VERDICT Abdoh (Tehran at Twilight) explores the lives behind the war-torn headlines in a way that captures the full humanity of the participants. Channeling a bit of Tim O'Brien and a good deal of Joseph Heller, he has written the best novel to date on the Middle East's ceaseless wars.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

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