A Nearby Country Called Love: A Novel

Toward the end of this remarkable novel, one of the characters drives off, “back towards the Gulf and to the bubble of his fathomable world.” Guided by Issa, a restless Iranian narrator recently returned to his birthplace in Tehran after a sojourn in New York City, the reader is introduced to a series of such worlds. The novel ventures through global cities, Iranian provinces, and Senegal, following characters who speak Arabic, Turkish, and Persian—and who hail both from families rooted in kinship and from chosen families constructed by misfits and outcasts. Issa recounts the mutual incomprehension of his deceased father, who ran a karate school, and his older brother, a well-regarded theater impresario who died of AIDS. He travels to Beirut to find a woman who translates poetry, only to learn later that she is not Lebanese at all but a young Iranian fleeing an arranged marriage. A Senegalese friend from New York arrives in Iran to start anew. The stories skate along the edge of the familiar and the inexplicable, recounted with a sort of bewilderment and tenderness that suggests the modern world has made unfathomable misfits of us all.