Tehran Noir

De: Salar Abdoh - editor/translator

Narrado por: Lameece Issaq, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Peter Ganim

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each audiobook is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the audiobook.

Includes brand-new stories by: Gina B. Nahai, Salar Abdoh, Lily Farhadpour, Azardokht Bahrami, Yourik Karim-Masihi, Vali Khalili, Farhaad Heidari Gooran, Aida Moradi Ahani, Mahsa Mohebali, Majed Neisi, Danial Haghighi, Javad Afhami, Sima Saeedi, Mahak Taheri, and Hossein Abkenar.

From the Introduction by Salar Abdoh: "There is something of both the absolutely spectacular and positively disgraceful about Tehran. But most writers around the world are inclined to think that their own sprawling metropolis is the capital of every imaginable vice and crime, of impossible love and tenderness and cruelty and malice in measures that seldom exist anywhere else. For me, Tehran's case is no different - except that there really is a difference here. The city may be a hothouse of decadence, a den of inequity, all that. But it still exists under the watchful eye of a very unique entity, the Islamic Republic. The city enforces its own morality police, and there are regular public hangings of drug dealers and thieves. Because of this, there is a raging sense of a split personality about the place - the imposed propriety of the mosque rubbing against the hidden (and more often not so hidden) rhythms of the real city... There is always an element of the end of the world about this place. A feeling of being once removed from the edge of the precipice. Elsewhere I have called it the 'Seismic City' - the seismic sanctuary. All of this will end one day. Yes. And maybe sooner than later. And when it does, by God, we will miss it."

©2014 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"This entry in Akashic's noir series takes the gritty sensibilities born out of American film and fiction to Tehran." (Publishers Weekly)

Worth it

The stories are great and give insight into life in tehran. Enjoyable listen. Would recommend

Great Atmosphere. Variety of themes + perspectives

I can think of few places more suitable for the grit and inner turmoil of the Noir genre than what I know of Tehran. As a prologue skims over, it is a city and country full of contradictions, moral and social conflict, extreme class differences, bribery a widely known fact of daily life, and an ever looming threat of a hypocritical government. Yet in this tangle are also earnest people, a rich culture, and a long history of resistance.

These contradictions may be a source of strife in the real life day to day of people but it is undeniable that some of these stories are in part intense and terrifying because they're not entirely outlandish from accounts heard from refugees and those who have found a way to speak out. In no way am I suggesting these stories or fact or that similar problems aren't in most major cities. Only that each story is built on top of a strong reference point.

Most anthologies inevitably vary in quality or appeal to a reader. What really took me by surprise was how with a single exception I was actually quite invested in each story. This is even more impressive with the variety of genres and character types of protagonists. There is also one story that tragically seems all too plausible and even one that tickles magical realism. There are well meaning journalists, survivors of the prison system alongside fatales of both genders, former convicts trying to bury their pasts, and simply industrious persons trying to muck their way through circumstances of living.

While you might gravitate more to one type or story or another everyone really captures that morally gray character or situation, bleak or vengeful setups, and shady choices that I associate with this subgenre. That the atmosphere carried from piece to piece without being one-note was very enjoyable.