Book Review: Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer

It´s not an everyday literary occurence to stay in love with a book I was waiting to read for a long time. Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer - which I had in audiobook format - was a pleasant surprise coming from the author of Septembers of Shiraz, that was also turned into a movie. Surprise because of the maturity of the writing and the complexities of the characters.

I will explain further my literary surprise. I´ve read in the last years a good number of books written by authors of Iranian origin - most of them living in the USA. Especially in the last months, there are a couple of aclaimed titles that were published placed within the events before and after the setting of the Islamic Revolution. Not all of them are equal and the emphasis on the history instead of the focus on the development of the story and of the characters is detrimental to the quality of the writing. Indeed, for the average non-Iranian especially European and American reader, a lot of historical background for understanding the complex Iranian history is needed. But the art of the writer is to create contexts and stories that may save the reader from a long - not always interesting - historical ramble, otherwise available in non-fiction books.

Man of My Time by Dalia Sofer do have some historical - pedagagical intermezzos - but what prevails in the end is the strength and failures of the characters. Especially of the storyteller, Hamid Mozaffarian, member of an educated family that left Iran after the Revolution. He stayed and reached modest professional achievement, in the end as employee of the Cultural and Foreign Affairs ministries.

Why exactly Hamid is telling the story is not clear. Looking for an excuse? For an absolution - including from himself? Trying to repeat his father encyclopedic preoccupations but at a more mundane level?

Hamid betrayed his father - not necessarily as a Freudian temptation. Why, is also not very clear, rather a mixture of youngish lack of conscience and blind enthusiasm and careless for the consequences, as trying to proof his new identity towards the new rulers. His father was against the Shah but assumed that by keeping his position within the Ministry of Culture he will destroy the system. He ended up becoming the system. Hamid will try the same and will end up in the same way. But he will be lonlier as ever: estranged from his family and his child, alienated in a world that he helped to be built - as a post-revolutionary auxiliary interrogator - unaware of its terrible turn of events.

This is what happens when intellectuals - or people with education - accept for different reasons the morganatic marriage with violent ideologies or with mindsets that pretend that killing a part of the population has religious or political excuses.

The ambiance of the story is often heavy but Sofer saves the day with hilarious references and encounters - from the guidance sought by opening My Uncle Napoleon to the religious dangers represented by an indecent woman on a cameo or the visualisation of judicial files brought home into a grocery plastic bag. I´ve always find dictatorship a source of tragi-comical inspiration, but only when you are an observer from afar, not a direct actor of historical events.

A special note to the reader of the audiobook: Navid Navid. A professional actor based in Germany, he made the reading original and alive, bringing sounding color into the story. The only problem - the horrendous French pronunciation, but for once I can be tolerant with such failures.

Rating: 4.5 stars