Gripping stories of the real lives and real pulse of Tehran

Fantastic read. City of Lies tells the stories of eight residents of Tehran, covering issues of class, money, sex, power, with multiple perspectives.

Chapter One: Dariush
Dariush's story is mostly based on my interviews with an ex-MEK member, who has spoken publicly of his MEK mission to Tehran to kill a former Tehran police chief. I have also used details provided by two other former MEK members living in Tehran and merged them with this man's story. Interviews with these former members also provided the details of the arrival in the country, family background, the MEK handler and the gun-runner. I have changed a few details of Dariush's assassination attempt. [...]

Chapter Two: Somayeh
Somayeh's story is based on that of a woman who wishes to remain anonymous; [...] Conversations between Somayeh and her friends are conversations heard between girls of the same age group and from the same conservative families as Somayeh, or they are conversations recounted by Somayeh. Political conversations between the men were conversations I listened to in her area [...]. I also interviewed several women in their fifties from conservative families for a full picture of Somayeh's mother and friends. [...]

This book seems to be the kind that would stir up a number of controversies, and I was quite hesitant to give it a go until a friend of mine recommended it to me. What I like about this book is the way it was structured and organized, I like how each character had a different background, and each character was from a different social class and experienced life in Iran in his/her own unique twisted way, which gave Ramita that diversity to her book. I also like the fact that this is all stories of real people and real events, and that the author actually put in the effort to authenticate her work. However, I wish the book portrayed more of the positive sides to Iran rather than just focusing on many of the negatives. Now the reason why I gave this book a 3/5 is firstly because it mainly focused on the negatives, and also because at certain points I felt out of place and didn't feel like I was captivated enough by what I was reading.

This book is definitely worthwhile. I don't know that any particularly new ground was broken, but for me it's always interesting to get a window into the worlds of people living very different lives from my own. Tehran is not a place I'd want to live or even visit, but I can understand the intrinsic loyalty this book's subjects feel toward their country, despite its oppression. It's a really interesting dynamic that the author works with well.

This book was somewhat difficult to get through. I'm not fond of seedy corruption, or descriptions of rape.

The story of Leyla traumatized me in the same way the death of Zoe Barnes traumatized me. I really found myself emotionally invested in the lives of these people; I had a similar experience with Barbara Demick's books about North Korea and Sarajevo.