Description
Book SynopsisAn uncensored and unflinching tale of power, corruption and love, set against the roiling aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution
Fattah is middle-aged and unmarried. A former hospital janitor who became rich working as a torturer in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, he now moonlights as an uncertified backstreet doctor specializing in ‘honour surgery’ for unmarried young women. Fattah has nothing but contempt for these women; that is until the beautiful Shahrzad lands on his operating table, and soon he is dangerously infatuated.
Undeterred that she is promised to – and in love with – another man, the younger and less affluent Mostafa, Fattah sets out to win Shahrzad by any means. Robbed of his bride, the jilted and furious Mostafa launches a desperate plan to move her beyond his rival’s reach by falsely reporting her as an opponent of the regime, a mission that takes him deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs.
Trade Review‘A classic of world literature.’
-- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
‘A vivid, exciting and nuanced portrait of post-revolutionary Tehran.’
-- LiteraturNachrichten
‘Rarely has a novel so exposed the moral erosion of Iran. The example of two henchmen of the mullahs’ regime vying for the same woman, the beautiful Shahrzad, depicts what remains of the ideals of the Islamic revolution of 1979: fear, bigotry, and pure violence.’
-- Taz
