“Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent.”
Selected as a Buzz Books of 2023 by Publishers Marketplace
Author Salar Abdoh’s A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.
About Salar
Salar Abdoh is an author and writer. His latest novel is A Nearby Country Called Love (Viking Penguin, 2023). His book, Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic, 2020), has been hailed as “One of a handful of great modern war novels,” and was a NYTimes Editors’ Choice, and also selected as a Best Book of the year across several platforms, including Publishers Weekly. He is also the author of Tehran At Twilight, Opium, and The Poet Game, and editor and translator of the celebrated crime collection, Tehran Noir.
Mostly dividing his time between New York City and Tehran, Iran, Salar regularly publishes personal essays and short stories, plus numerous translations of other authors that appear in journals across the world.
A professor at the City University of New York’s City College campus in Harlem, he conducts workshops in the English Department’s MFA program and also directs undergraduate creative writing.
Available Now
A Nearby Country Called Love
A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.
Praise for A Nearby Country Called Love
“Once I glanced at this book I couldn’t stop reading, staying up late to gallop through this harrowing, beautiful, surprising novel in one evening. A profound depiction of gender roles as prisons, and of who escapes these prisons at what cost.”
“Salar Abdoh’s novel takes us to the perilous borderland between men and women. His generous story suggests that those of us who live in these worlds—Iranians, Americans, men, women—might yet find solace, and peace, and love.”
“Salar Abdoh knows well the perceived abyss that exists between the lands of East and West, one as wide as the distance between strangers and brothers, hatred and tenderness. And yet, from that place, he has given us a modern classic.”
“Reading this book was almost like encountering a magic trick, but without any of the sleight of hand of a stage show. Abdoh is at once honest and encouraging in this portrait of contemporary relationships, conjuring a story that shows us how to build chosen families and honor blood ties despite and through the violence of modern life.”
“No novelist writing in English has better captured the weirdness, lies, and occasional transcendence of the Islamic Republic than Salar Abdoh.”
More Books by Salar
“Abdoh’s novel is as much a meditation on time and memory as it is a book about war. The novel arrives at wisdom by shining a brilliant, feverish light on the nature of not only modern war but all war, and even of life itself.”
“A searing, poetic, and morally authentic account of contemporary conflict. Abdoh eloquently depicts the absurdity of war. A devastating profound catch-22 of modern conflict.”
“A brutally realistic look at war and love and fear and everything else that humans do. I am stunned at how good this book is.”
“The book captures the tragedy, comedy, and sheer absurdity of modern war like nothing else I have read.”
“One of a handful of great modern war novels.”
Out of Mesopotamia
Salar Abdoh
“A swift, hardboiled novel. Shadowy zealots exist everywhere, whether in conference rooms or interrogation rooms or – most often – in rooms that can serve as both.”
“Abdoh paints a gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption. Captivating.”
“A remarkable meditation on violence, and on all the ways one bears witness to pain. Abdoh depicts a pulsating portrait of Tehran. A smart, eloquent novel.”
“A smart political thriller for our times.”
Tehran At Twilight
Salar Abdoh
“A tour de force not to be missed.”
“This entry in Akashic’s noir series takes the gritty sensibilities born out of American film and fiction to Tehran.”
“Tehran Noir is not only a solid noir collection, but an illuminated look into day-to-day life in the Middle East.”
“A collection such as this is able to bring Iran to life for the foreign reader in a way other fiction and nonfiction cannot. Superb.”
Tehran Noir
Salar Abdoh
“Ornate and ambitious. A complex, politically sophisticated story.”
“An entertaining and heart-quickening debut.”
“The Poet Game offers its own taut, moody spin to the spy-genre conventions. Abdoh delivers a surprising, smart thriller.”
The Poet Game
Salar Abdoh
“Critics pronounced the spy novel dead after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Salar Abdoh shows that is alive and well, and living in Manhattan.”
Opium
Salar Abdoh
Upcoming Events
Check here for upcoming events, lectures, book tour dates, and other engagements by author Salar Abdoh.
Date: Tues, Nov 7, 2023
City: Brooklyn, NY
Venue: Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Time: 7:30pm
More Info: here
Date: Tues, Nov 28, 2023
City: Pittsburgh, PA
Venue: City of Asylum, 40 W North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
Time: 7:00pm
More Info: here
Date:
City:
Venue:
Time:
More Info:
Date:
City:
Venue:
Time:
More Info:
Contact
PUBLICITY:
Julia Rickard
Publicist, Viking/ Penguin
1745 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10019
jrickard@penguinrandomhouse.com
Raven Ross
Marketing Associate, Viking Penguin Books
1745 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10019
raross@penguinrandomhouse.com
LITERARY AGENT:
Jessica Papin
Vice President, Literary Agent
Dystel Goderich & Bourret LLC
1 Union Square West, Suite 904
New York, NY 10003
WhatsApp (908) 693-4646
Voicemail: 212 627-9100 (extension 709)
twitter: @jkpapin
www.dystel.com
TO GET IN TOUCH WITH SALAR: