Iranian-American authors Salar Abdoh and Dalia Sofer present their new books, both of which center on Iranian men alienated from themselves and from the tumultuous world around them. Abdoh’s Out of Mesopotamia follows Saleh, a middle-aged Iranian journalist who cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. Abdoh subverts and expands our understanding of the war novel, offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true. Sofer’s Man of My Time tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, an interrogator with the Iranian regime who is forced to reckon with his past when he encounters his estranged family in New York. Politically complex and emotionally compelling, this novel is not only about family and memory but about the interdependence of captor and captive, of citizen and country, of an individual and his or her heritage. Moderated by Persis Karim, poet, editor, and professor of Comparative & World Literature at San Francisco State University.
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