THE IMMORTALS OF TEHRAN

A poet navigates Iranian life and politics in the tumultuous years between World War II and the Islamic Revolution.

Araghi’s ambitious debut novel pivots around Ahmad, who was 10 years old when he witnessed his shellshocked father commit suicide. The incident at once strikes him silent and introduces him to some peculiar family lore, most prominently from a seemingly immortal great-great-great grandfather who is inexplicably still alive. Another relative is convinced that Ahmad is similarly blessed with seeming immortality, and Ahmad unquestionably leads a charmed life amid the chaos of the Iranian capital: He survives the country’s postwar famine and rises from street brawling to becoming a poet whose words are so fierce they emit light. Writing under the pseudonym Silent Fist, Ahmad soon becomes a much-discussed figure in both literary and political circles. Araghi braids Ahmad's story with an uncle’s obsession with the movements of cats around Tehran, which allegedly predict the country’s fate; and with an ever branching family tree full of activists, politicians, and poets. Ahmad’s professional and personal trek is compelling, but it also feels smothered by the competing storylines, which reflect Araghi’s urge to not miss a moment in Iran’s 20th-century history, from the postwar rise of Mohammed Mosaddegh to the 1953 coup to the shah’s exile. There are striking moments that capture the national drama (as when a tank crashes through a movie theater as if it were leaping off the screen), but Araghi is strongest at more intimate moments of courtship and parenting, and his zigzagging from blunt scenes of torture to magical realist imagery of Ahmad’s words cutting through metal makes the story feel lacking in a tonal center.

An admirable if overencumbered family saga.