Then the Fish Swallowed Him: A Novel

by Amir Ahmadi Arian Narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi

Overview

An critically-acclaimed Iranian author makes his American literary debut with this powerful and harrowing psychological portrait of modern Iran-an unprecedented and urgent work of fiction with echoes of The Stranger, 1984, and The Orphan Master's Son-that exposes the oppressive and corrosive power of the state to bend individual lives.

Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man since the unexpected deaths of his father and mother years ago, he is decidedly apolitical-even during the driver's strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his.

Handcuffed and blindfolded, he is taken to the infamous Evin prison for political dissidents. Inside this stark, strangely ordered world, his fate becomes entwined with Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. The two develop a disturbing yet interdependent relationship, with each playing his assigned role in a high stakes psychological game of cat and mouse, where Yunus endures a mind-bending cycle of solitary confinement and interrogation. In their startlingly intimate exchanges, Yunus's life begins to unfold-from his childhood memories growing up in a freer Iran to his heartbreaking betrayal of his only friend. As Yunus struggles to hold on to his sanity and evade Saeed's increasingly undeniable accusations, he must eventually make an impossible choice: continue fighting or submit to the system of lies upholding Iran's power.

Gripping, startling, and masterfully told, Then the Fish Swallowed Him is a haunting story of life under despotism.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Fajer Al-Kaisi uses his deep baritone to create the surprising character Yunus Turab, who we quickly realize is not an average bus driver. Listeners are drawn into Yunus's everyday life through the lively pace set by Al-Kaisi. This makes ordinary descriptions of Tehran seem alive and engaging. The narration grows more somber as Yunus is imprisoned and tortured. Is he an anti-government agent? Or one more victim of the harsh Iranian regime? Al-Kaisi will have listeners eager to hear the next clue and the next. His rich, warm delivery emphasizes the decent man under attack at the heart of this story. Yunus's fate illuminates the struggles facing contemporary Iranians in a story told by an expert performer. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

An important new novel, not-to-be-missed... A sharply observed, painfully intimate and illuminating vision of Iran that will be invaluable to readers.” — Joyce Carol Oates

“I found Amir Arian’s Then the Fish Swallowed Him a strange and startling vision written with the ferocity of an endangered artist and the lyric eloquence of a master. The world conjured up in these pages will haunt the reader with a real, palpable but entertaining dread much like the Iranian classic, The Blind Owl. It is a debut of genuine brilliance and wit.” — Chigozie Obioma, Man Booker Shortlisted author of The Fisherman and An Orchestra of Minorities

“Then the Fish Swallowed Him had me gripped from the start, I couldn’t turn away. A story about power and the way it can hold us in its cruel grasp. This is a novel of our times. Revealing, dark and illuminating, beautiful and tense.”  — Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo 

“Then the Fish Swallowed Him is a gripping, intelligent novel, opening vistas of the imagination with economy and insight. Harrowing and clear as a bell.” — Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian 

“In this stunning work, Arian accomplishes a rare feat by telling a captivating story of an unforgettable character and by bearing witness to the hard truths endured by political prisoners everywhere.” 
— Booklist (starred review)

“A distressing, smartly interior tale of the horrors sown by oppressive politics.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Chigozie Obioma

I found Amir Arian’s Then the Fish Swallowed Him a strange and startling vision written with the ferocity of an endangered artist and the lyric eloquence of a master. The world conjured up in these pages will haunt the reader with a real, palpable but entertaining dread much like the Iranian classic, The Blind Owl. It is a debut of genuine brilliance and wit.

Isabella Hammad

Then the Fish Swallowed Him is a gripping, intelligent novel, opening vistas of the imagination with economy and insight. Harrowing and clear as a bell.

Joyce Carol Oates

An important new novel, not-to-be-missed... A sharply observed, painfully intimate and illuminating vision of Iran that will be invaluable to readers.

Christy Lefteri

Then the Fish Swallowed Him had me gripped from the start, I couldn’t turn away. A story about power and the way it can hold us in its cruel grasp. This is a novel of our times. Revealing, dark and illuminating, beautiful and tense.” 

Booklist (starred review)

In this stunning work, Arian accomplishes a rare feat by telling a captivating story of an unforgettable character and by bearing witness to the hard truths endured by political prisoners everywhere.” 

MAY 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Fajer Al-Kaisi uses his deep baritone to create the surprising character Yunus Turab, who we quickly realize is not an average bus driver. Listeners are drawn into Yunus's everyday life through the lively pace set by Al-Kaisi. This makes ordinary descriptions of Tehran seem alive and engaging. The narration grows more somber as Yunus is imprisoned and tortured. Is he an anti-government agent? Or one more victim of the harsh Iranian regime? Al-Kaisi will have listeners eager to hear the next clue and the next. His rich, warm delivery emphasizes the decent man under attack at the heart of this story. Yunus's fate illuminates the struggles facing contemporary Iranians in a story told by an expert performer. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-12-23
A Tehran bus driver is arrested during a strike, making him a pawn of Iranian politics and a victim of cruel imprisonment.

Yunus, the narrator of this brisk and piercing protest novel, is a demure middle-aged man who's striven to keep the turmoil of Iranian politics at arm's length: The 1979 revolution was overshadowed by his father's death and his mother's ensuing depression and maybe suicide. So he's blithely confident his participation in a 2005 drivers' strike can only be perceived as a reasonable plea for better treatment, not part of a global insurrection against the Ahmadinejad regime. What's the harm of reading Foucault and Marx with fellow union members? Plenty, the regime believes, and after Yunus beats a young counterprotester in a fit of anger, he's arrested, sent to Tehran's fearsome Evin prison, and told his victim was the son of the transportation minister. Whether the allegation is true or not, Yunus' prison stint becomes an unjust torment of beatings, forced confessions, and the slow-creeping madness of solitary confinement. (In one well-turned, poignant scene, he pleads with a fly not to abandon him.) This novel, the first in English by the Iranian-born Arian, is scaffolded with familiar tropes of kangaroo courts, false statements, and good-cop, bad-cop routines. But the author writes about Yunus' plight with a plainspoken, lacerating intensity. Moreover, Yunus is a richly imagined character who reckons with the consequences of his political ignorance and an ill-advised affair that's used as further ammunition against him. A few books and some bad judgment do not an enemy of the state make, but Arian expertly tracks Yunus' gears' turning from anger to depression to self-judging. Yunus' mental disorientation is as punishing as his beatings and, as the closing pages show, leaves lasting harm.

A distressing, smartly interior tale of the horrors sown by oppressive politics.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172953644
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/24/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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