★ 02/10/2020
This mesmerizing and unsettling novel by Whiting Award–winner Sofer (The September of Shiraz) diagrams the monstrous shaping of an Iranian interrogator by decades of cultural and political upheavals. While visiting New York on a diplomatic mission to the UN in the present day, Hamid Mozaffarian is tasked by his mother and brother with carrying the remains of his long-estranged father back to them in Iran—an undertaking that spurs him to take stock of how he became the man his family hardly knows. Mozaffarian reflects on how his youthful ambition during and following the 1979 revolution led to his transformation into a self-deluded bureaucrat who would condemn others as casually and arbitrarily as he would offer mercy. He also looks back on lost loves, and the discord between him and his wife, Noushin, who left him five years earlier (“You’re just a warden with a wedding ring,” she told him on the way out), and their daughter, whom he hasn’t seen for three years. The tension between the elegance of Sofer’s language and the nihilistic unraveling of her antihero emphasizes the irony of the title, which lays bare the conceit that a person’s actions might be excused by historical context. Readers will find Sofer’s meditation on power’s ability to corrupt as relevant and disturbing as the day’s headlines. (Apr.)
"With Sofer’s considerable talents, the betrayals (of both self and others) that leave Hamid a brittle shell of a man are fully worthy of our intense gaze . . . [Man of My Time is] finely wrought, a master class in the layering of time and contradiction that gives us a deeply imagined, and deeply human, soul." —Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review
"Sofer is at her best evoking Hamid’s pugnacious youth. The novel’s prerevolutionary Iran is a cauldron of disparate discontents . . . The aphoristic elegance of Sofer’s writing is one of the book’s attractions." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"Assured, accomplished . . . [Sofer's] portrait of [Hamid's] political evolution and interior deterioration is extraordinary . . . Certainly there is some horror and violence in Man of My Time, but it is all the more chilling for its restraint." —Azadeh Moaveni, The Times Literary Supplement
"An exploration of how political and social upheavals leave their marks on entire generations, and irrevocably alter those involved . . . Sofer’s lyrical, underline-worthy sentences contrast with Hamid’s lack of remorse and awareness . . . The novel’s most poignant insight derives from the irony that we as readers are trapped in a chronicle of a man who lacks self-awareness." —Julie Hakim Azzam, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Mesmerizing and unsettling . . . The tension between the elegance of Sofer’s language and the nihilistic unraveling of her antihero emphasizes the irony of the title, which lays bare the conceit that a person’s actions might be excused by historical context. Readers will find Sofer’s meditation on power’s ability to corrupt as relevant and disturbing as the day’s headlines." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“In her powerful second novel, Sofer portrays a man whose principles have estranged him from his loved ones . . . A gorgeously written character study that examines, with sensitivity and pathos, the small steps that lead a man down an unexpected and ultimately isolating path.” —Kristine Huntley, Booklist (starred review)
"Sofer brings compassion, insight, and acerbic humor to her depiction of a man at once too intelligent to altogether ignore the consequences of his behavior yet helpless to withstand the turbulent momentum of history. A perceptive, humane inquiry into Iran's history and soul." —Kirkus (starred review)
"A memorable and difficult character who can be seen as embodying the spiritual distress of Iran since the 1978 revolution. A powerful, complex, and profoundly anguished novel made more relevant by current tensions." —Library Journal (starred review)
“Now more than ever the world needs Dalia Sofer’s voice. Man of My Time is a brilliant, gripping account of countries, politics, and the long reach of history. But it’s also a story of family, the human soul and what it means to be alive today—for Iranians and Americans alike. This book could not have arrived at a more urgent time.” —Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of Brief Encounters With the Enemy and When Skateboards Will Be Free
“With Iran so intensely before us, Man of My Time does what only fiction can do. We are inside the mind of a man whose choices keep stunning us, in the violence of politics and in the intimacy of family. A masterful novel, eye-opening in its tale of the multiplying costs of betrayal.” —Joan Silber, author of Improvement
“In Dalia Sofer's engrossing and deeply moving novel, the revolution devours it children. Her memorably flawed narrator Hamid imperfectly navigates violence, inheritance, betrayal, and "so much sorrow" in post-revolutionary Iran. It is a beautifully conceived and heartbreaking family portrait.” —Mark Sarvas, author of Memento Park
“In the grand tradition of confessionals, Dalia Sofer’s wry but troubled narrator unfolds a riveting tale of a man rotting from the inside, just as his nation, Iran, and so much of the rest of the world today is also in moral convulsions. Both wrenching and wise, Man of My Time gives the reader food for thought in every elegantly-wrought sentence and on every level at once: the political, personal, historical and philosophical. A brilliant examination of the roots and fragility of human morality, this is one of the great books of our age.” —Helen Benedict author of Wolf Season and Sand Queen
“Dalia Sofer’s bold and beautiful novel explores boundaries that are geographical, political, ethical, and temporal. Her unsparing yet empathic portrait of Hamid Mozaffarian challenges facile notions about the distance between good and evil, right and wrong, judgment and redemption. At once haunted and haunting, Man of My Time is very much a book for our time.” —Michael Frank, author of What is Missing
★ 2020-01-13
Iran's brutal and tragic years of upheaval are evoked through a one-time revolutionary's rueful reflections.
Hamid Mozaffarian has arrived in New York City at a cold and lonely phase of his life. Having served almost three decades interrogating those considered enemies of the Iranian government, he is now helping his country's minister for foreign affairs deal with "a tiff" between their navy and the Americans in the Persian Gulf. Hamid's diplomatic mission enables him to reestablish contact with his mother and brother, from whom he'd been estranged since they exiled themselves to America after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He agrees to their request to carry, in a mint candy tin, the ashes of his father, who'd died two weeks earlier, so they can be scattered back in Iran. In the meantime, while in New York, Hamid struggles to come to grips with choices he's made that have also left him alienated from his wife and daughter back home. A sensitive, artistic boy fascinated by the vulnerability of glass objects, Hamid grew up bewildered by his scholarly father's distant, sometimes severe behavior toward him. Young Hamid was likewise bemused by his father's shift from opposing the shah to working for him. His father explained: "Slowly, slowly I became the system." Ironically, the same became true for Hamid, as he reached his young manhood as an idealistic revolutionary seeking the shah's overthrow. Soon he proved himself dedicated to the Ayatollah Khomeini's republic by carrying out an appalling act of betrayal against his father, and over the succeeding decades he became deeply entrenched in his country's draconian system of dispensing justice. One is often tempted while reading this novel to think of Hamid as little more than an introspective species of monster. But Sofer (The Septembers of Shiraz, 2007) brings compassion, insight, and acerbic humor to her depiction of a man at once too intelligent to altogether ignore the consequences of his behavior yet helpless to withstand the turbulent momentum of history.
A perceptive, humane inquiry into Iran's history and soul.
