I was about 250 pages into Blake Butler's 300,000,000 when this collection of stories came in through interlibrary loan (I'm broke, what can I say). To be honest, Butler's book had worn out its welcome a good 100 pages ago, and TEHRAN NOIR was everything I was craving. Dirty, murderous, sort of the same as 300,000,000 now that I think about it, except engaged with a world beyond America and Blake Butler's dick (so many dicks in 300,000,000--every free write ends with a dick). TEHRAN NOIR humanizes through the back door, shows dumbass Americans like me that Iranians have so much more on their minds than what CNN or Fox News or a gang of Republicans even dumber and assier want us (me) to believe. The Iranians in these stories love, fuck, drink, hate, do drugs, remember war and revolution, live vital lives; they could care less about nuking the United States. Mandatory reading for xenophobics, Islamophobics, and Iranophobics. Recommended reading for lovers of good stories all around.