City of Lies

June 23, 2014
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. Agent: Sophie Lambert, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency (U.K.).