SHADOWS OF TEHRAN

A young Anglo-Iranian grows up fighting for freedom on many fronts while discovering who he really is and what he believes in Berg’s military thriller.

Life in Iran begins idyllically for Ricardo, who joins his mother Samira, American father David, and sister Hannah. Even when the Shah is installed, life is still tolerable. But the Islamic Republic is another matter, bringing religious tyranny and the Iraq/Iran War (Ricardo is dragooned into the army). Long before that, though, David abandons the family, and readers realize that he is not what he had seemed (he will surface again and again). Ricardo, as a teenager, will not accept the repressive regime of the Ayatollahs; he becomes the motorcycle-driving “Shadow Rider,” leading the Revolutionary Guards into blind alleyways where they can be attacked from the rooftops. Ricardo becomes a folk hero of sorts and a scourge of the government. Ricardo learns that he can withstand pain and torture, and when he is sent to the front lines against Iraq, it awakens a martial spirit in him. When he escapes to the United States and joins the Army, he is practically ecstatic (“he had forgotten what it felt like to wake up knowing that the day wasn’t a battle to survive”); surely Sgt. Ricardo Rosen is on his way to many more hair-raising adventures in the future. This is a very impressive debut novel, and Ricardo wears his hero cape stylishly, figuratively speaking; hopefully, it won’t eventually verge into the cartoonish if subsequent stories follow. This line captures his ethos well: “You thought you could drown me in fear, but you only taught me how to breathe underwater.” Berg says that the story is largely autobiographical, and that he himself was Ricardo Rosen. Surely an interview would be fascinating.

Berg has earned entrance to this genre club—readers will hope for further adventures.