Man of My Time

by Dalia Sofer

From the bestselling author of The Septembers of Shiraz, the story of an Iranian man reckoning with his capacity for love and evil

Set in Iran and New York City, Man of My Time tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. Tucked in his pocket throughout the trip, the ashes propel him into a first-person excavation—full of mordant wit and bitter memory—of a lifetime of betrayal, and prompt him to trace his own evolution from a perceptive boy in love with marbles to a man who, on seeing his own reflection, is startled to encounter “a beautiful, indignant thug.” As he reconnects with his brother and others living in exile, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past, with the insidious nature of violence, and with his entrenchment in a system that for decades ensnared him.

Politically complex and emotionally compelling, Man of My Time explores variations of loss—of people, places, ideals, time, and self. This is a novel not only about family and memory but about the interdependence of captor and captive, of citizen and country, of an individual and his or her heritage. With sensitivity and strength, Dalia Sofer conjures the interior lives of the “generation that had borne and inflicted what could not be undone.”

Genres: Fiction, Iran, Historical Fiction, Middle East, Literary Fiction, New York, Historical

386 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 14, 2020

About the author

The Septembers of Shiraz is Dalia Sofer's first novel. She was born in 1972 in Tehran, Iran and fled at the age of ten to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo. She currently resides in New York City.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a little while to warm up to this book. But once I did, I was all in; in fact, I think this book is a masterwork and a solid contender for one of my best of year.

And why? Because it has every element of what makes a book worth reading: an astonishingly informed grasp of the complex political and cultural life of Iran, a deep psychological insight into what transforms our idealism into something more sinister and the lies we tell ourselves to justify our changes, highly intelligent characters who think and feel deeply, and an overall arc that explores what it means to exist at arm's length from those things that give life its deepest meaning.

Certainly, Dalia Sofer's newest book requires time, concentration and immersion. The anti-hero, Hamid Mozaffarian, is hardly likeable; he has betrayed those closest to him and has worked as an interrogator with the Iranian regime. The author does not take the easy way out by making this a redemption tale; rather, it is a journey of awareness, recognition, and ultimately, resigned acceptance that one is either a creator or destroyer in his lifetime. The nuances of that realization are breathtaking. Every person, the author writes, already harbors in himself his own personal boneyard.

The dangers of self-deception are also mined and serve as a cautionary tale for today's fraught times. Hamid is told by someone close to him: "...a man can make himself believe anything he wants. He may convince himself that he is wielding influence from inside, that in fact he is doing good, or whatever fairy tale he tells himself to fall asleep at night. But as long as he remains in that pothole, he is nothing more than a collaborator."

I could go on and on extolling the marvels of this book but every reader should experience his or her own reading journey with it. I became acquainted with Dalia Sofer years ago when she wrote the wonderful The Septembers of Shiraz and was eager to become an advance reader. My heartfelt thanks to #FSG Books for granting my wish in exchange for an honest review. I hope this intelligent, sensitive, and thought-provoking novel gets the wide readership it so richly deserves.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

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“After nearly a decade of delirious revenge, rations, war, and death, we saw the world in shades of blood.”

In Man of My Time Dalia Sofer makes a fascinating and unsettling inquiry into morality. The novel is centred on and narrated by Hamid Mozaffarian. When Hamid, a former interrogator for the Iranian regime, travels to New York he reconnects with his younger brother, Omid, who he hadn't seen or spoken to since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. As the day passes Hamid finds himself looking back into his past, tracing his history with his family and his country.

“The point is that in the autobiography there is a time-honored tradition of redemption and repentance, which is a concept dear to all: towbeh for Muslims, teshuvah for Jews, penance for Christians—who doesn’t appreciate a good metamorphosis story, a passage from wickedness to virtue? Even the contemporary secular tale, say, of the disillusioned drunk or the wayward hustler, hasn’t escaped this familiar trajectory, of darkness to light, anguish to liberation.”

From the very beginning readers will be aware of Hamid's dubious morals. To label him as antihero however seems inadequate as Sofer's protagonist challenges easy definition. He's capable of betraying and self-betraying, of committing reprehensible acts and of shirking accountability.
As Hamid revisits his childhood we are shown contradictory episodes: at times Hamid seems like a sensitive child who is made to feel ashamed of his own fragility, and then we see the same child becoming obsessed with the “demise” of insects. Hamid's formative years are shaped by his difficult relationship with his father and by Iran's growing unrest. As a restless teenager Hamid's unease towards his father morphs into contempt, and he finds himself projecting his hatred towards his father's authority towards those who rule the country. He becomes entangled with rebels, agitators, and idealists, and seems eager to prove himself to them. When Hamid's family flee the country during the revolution, he refuses to go with them.
From mutinous teenager (“there was something consoling about being maligned, having a grievance, and maybe even dying misjudged”) Hamid grows into a deeply alienated man who leads a solitary existence. His wife wants to divorce him, he has become estranged from his daughter, and he has parted ways from the man he considered to be one of his only allies. His cynic worldview and the rancour he feels towards everybody and everything (from every generation to Iranians who live abroad to Western ideologies) give his narrative an unsparing tone.

“We were, all of us, funambulists skywalking between the myth of our ancestral greatness and the reality of our compromised past, between our attempts to govern ourselves and our repeated failures. We were a generation doused in oil and oblivion, the city expanding in steel and glass around us, erasing at dizzying speed the alleys of our grandfathers, hemming us in along the way.”

As Hamid recounts his life-story, his growing disillusionment towards the revolution and his generation becomes apparent. His interrogation into his past doesn't provide easy answers. There are plenty of instance when Hamid seems to consciously choose to do something he himself considers to be wrong. But we are also shown the sway that one's family and one's country have on a man.
Sofer's erudite writing was a pleasure to read. Hamid's adroit narration provides us with plenty of shrewd observations about his country and history in general. He analyses his past behaviour and that of others. Hamid offers plenty of interesting, if not downright disconcerting, speculations about a myriad of topics.
Through Hamid's story Sofer navigates notions of right and wrong, good and evil, judgment and forgiveness. Troubling as it was, Hamid's narration also provides plenty of incisive observations about human nature. The way he describes the feelings he experiences (love was a sweet interruption in the lonely march toward nonbeing) could also be startlingly poetic.
Yet, while Sofer succeeds in making giving Hamid nuance and authenticity, her secondary characters often verged on the unbelievable. We aren't given extensive time with any other character, which is expected given our protagonist (Hamid repeatedly pushes others away, from his family to his partners and his daughter: “I heard the sound of my tired breath inside absences I had spent decades collecting, with the same diligence and fervor with which my father once amassed his beloved encyclopedia”). However, the fact that they have few appearances made me all the more watchful of those scenes they do appear in...and I couldn't help but noticing that the way they spoke at times seemed more suited to a movie. What they said often didn't really fit in what kind of person they until then seemed to be or their age (Hamid's daughter speaks in a very contrived way).
I also wish that the story had remained more focused on Hamid's childhood and that his relationship to his mother could have been explored some more.
Still, this was a nevertheless interesting read. Sofer has created a complex main character and she vividly renders his 'time'.

“What was to be said? Absence was our country’s chief commodity, and we all had, at one time or another, traded in it.”

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

”If I examined my life through the prism of a dossier – as I had grown accustomed to examining all lives – then I could have said that mine, the entire arc of it, had been a misprint…But when I contemplated myself as a man and not a dossier, then the incongruousness of my present no longer perplexed me: my life, as so many before mine, was but a series of wrong turns.”

In her novel, Man of My Time, Dalia Sofia does an extraordinary job in creating a complex portrait of a man struggling to come to terms with himself and his past. Her character, Hamid Mozaffarian, is a surprisingly engaging narrator considering that his actions are anything but admirable. As he recounts his life, he questions his long association with the Iranian regime and his own part in the violence that followed the revolution. He is haunted by the many losses brought about by his own betrayals. Did he simply take ‘wrong turns’, as he states, simply a victim, trapped in the system? Or is he a selfish man, inherently devoid of empathy and compassion, a detached but willing participant? Can he be both? Is he, if not forgivable, redeemable? The individual reader will have to make their own decisions.

The novel is exquisitely written, an intelligent and multi-layered examination of both country, individual, and family. It is a devastating look at love, loss and the nature of evil. As other reviewers have already noted, this is one of those novels where there are an endless number of quotable lines. I was constantly stopping to reread sentences that arrested me. Unless I am missing something, I am somewhat baffled by the lack of attention I have seen this novel receive, other than the coveted front-page review in The New Times Book Review. I highly recommend it.

[Titi Coolda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totul despre Persia/Iran mă atrage asemenea moliei de către lampă. Uneori apropierea asta se lasă cu aripile pârjolite. Ambiguitatea cu care am citit această carte, frumos scrisă, Dalia Sofer are vână de poet, provine din raportarea mea la antieroul poveștii, Hamid Mozafarrian. Cumva nu l-am simțit destul de clar. Nu mi se pare un personaj viabil în toată maleficitatea sa, în schimb personajul colectiv al diasporei iraniene din America este foarte bine surprins, se vede că scriitoarea este un bun cunoscător fiind ea însăși un membru al grupului. La fel de bine realizat descriptiv este Iranul prerevoluționar, povestea unchiului Mashid și a mătușii toxice, povestea trădărilor și a pierderilor, amintiri din copilăria fraților.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Dalia Sofer has created the conflicted character of Hamid Mozaffarian to tell this story. Hamid is not only of “man of his time”, he is also a man of his place. The place is Iran and the pivotal event is the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

The novel goes back and forth in time, but remains reader friendly. In the beginning you can see the absent parenting skills of his academic father and social climbing mother.

Along with young Hamid the reader learns that his father supported Mossaddegh and compromised with the Shaw’s supporters to land a good position. This contrasts with the choices made by Hamid’s beloved uncle Majid.

With this background, you see the young Hamid’s act of revolutionary zeal and actions that have major consequences for parents and his brother. It sets his life on a course for which he feels trapped.

This novel is thought provoking on so many levels. How much of Hamid’s life was preprogrammed? What were his alternatives? Was he re-living his father’s life? Would his daughter escape his? How do you live with guilt? Should the Iranians who left after the Revolution judge the decisions of those who stayed? How will the next generation deal with the suffering the generation before it inflicted on the country?

From this book you get a feel for life in Tehran. It seems to have had a robust café (tea drinking) culture, throughout all the turbulent years. Through the character of Akbari you see how things get done during and after the Revolution. Communication with people in the US is possible. The press does not seem fully censured; but books and art work are. Divorce court looks quite simple compared to US the process. Women seem to be able to carve out a life independent of men.

The story and its pacing, the development of Hamid’s family (individually and collectively) and prose which shows Hamid's careful observation and perspective are exceptional. This example of the prose from p. 321

“What no one wrote about were the accompanying photographs and the gradual shifting of his (Akbari’s) appearance - manicured nails, tasseled loafers, Rolex watch…. Next to him … the custodian, a cleric whose religious credentials were as mutable as Akbari’s veneer; though for years he had claimed on his website to be an ayatollah, he had downgraded himself to hojatoleslam after the press began poking into his seminary records.”)

There is some italicized text in Farsi followed by a translation, which is very interesting when it is an idiom.

I highly recommend this book for those interested in Iran and know its recent history. Those who know Iranian (Persian) literature, geography and culture can appreciate the book even more.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful novel about a man selling out. It is also about the complexity of Iranian exile and revolution. I do have some quibbles with it. It is a bit classist in the Iranian context. The protagonist is from a wealthy family and the book depicts the revolutionaries being from poor families and the tragedy being that someone from this man's station could have joined those thugs. That's not exactly how it went down. There is also a common story among Iranian exiles that paints the Shah's time as a rosy one, but it was not. Despite all of that, it's beautifully written and complex.

[Azita Rassi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many mistakes in how post-revolutionary Iran and Iranians are presented. There’s also a weakness in characterization that show itself most prominently in Hamid. Compare his interrogation scenes with Cromwell’s in Wolf Hall. Both are designed to show the reader that the interrogators are not wholeheartedly invested in their cruel pursuit. They’re aware that they’re doing harm. But where Mantel’s creation succeeds to charm you and win your sympathy and even admiration, Sofer’s leaves you with pity at best and more likely, as was the case with my friends and me, with repulsion. You don’t even need to compare this novel with a Booker winner. Take a look at how successfully Sabaa Tahir has presented the complex character of Elias in her YA series (book1: An Ember in the Ashes) and you’ll see what I’m talking about. And then we come to my pet peeve: this book was far too much ‘tell’ and too little ‘show’.
The audiobook was performed by someone who was clearly as alien with Iran as the author. He butchered Khayyam’s quatrain, mispronounced book titles, and even managed to say the names of a few cities with the wrong pronunciation. It was at times more torture listening to him say Persian words than listen to actual mentions of torture in the book as the latter was so glossed over that a foreign reader could well come to believe that an activist in Iran would only be facing a prison sentence or in sever cases death penalty.
The redeeming factor that brought about my second star was the pre-revolution content. I really enjoyed the parts that dealt with his childhood.
I hope Dalia Sofer writes her next book about circumstances she is fully familiar with or at least does some extensive research before undertaking a similar project. This was a complete disappointment.

[Homa Sharifmousavi · Rating 1 out of 5]

داستان هم پخش و پلاست هم پرت و پلا، هم آبکی، چیزی شبیه سریال‌های صدا و سیما با همون کیفیت و دقت. اما از تمام اینها بدتر اشتباهات تاریخی-سیاسی-اجتماعی کتابه. اونقدر غلط که خیلی وقتها نقش نمک رو زخم رو داره، مخصوصا وقتی میرسه به بعد انقلاب و تمام وقایع رو نرم و ملایم جلوه داده. نویسنده تقریبا از هیچ اتفاقی نگذشته و همه رو به هر زوری بوده یه جوری چسبونده به کتاب(البته معلوم نیست چوری این وسط از قتل‌های زنجیره‌ای دهه هفتاد پریده و اشاره‌ای بهشون نکرده!) با اینکه نه نیازی به این همه اتفاق بود و نه این همه شخصیت وقتی همه ناقص‌اند و تو دل هم جفت و جور نشدن تو داستان و وقتی حتی به خودش زحمت نداده وقایع سیاسی رو که زخم خیلی از ما هستند درست بیان کنه به جای لطیف و ملایم نشون دادنشون، بگذریم از اشتباهات دیگرش در بیان واقعیت های تاریخی و سیاسی.
آخر کتاب هم که میرسیم به همون مزخرف همیشگی که مردم ایران فراموشکارند، دو روز حرف میزنند و بعد یادشون میره و ...نه خانم سوفر، اینجا دیگه نمیتونم شما رو از شخصیت اصلی کتابت و حرفش جدا کنم، ما از یاد نبردیم و نمیبریم اما شما هیچ درکی از وضعیت فعلی نداری، از زخم‌ها، از سرکوب، از اینکه نتیجه‌ی این اتفاقاتی که لیست کردی چجور جامعه مدنی‌ای بوده(که در کتاب هم با تصویری که از ایران فعلی نشون دادی مشخصه که بیخبری) و بهتر بود یا داستانت رو محدود میکردی به همان زمان انقلاب و کمی بعدش، یا خیلی سخت بود؟ کلا داستان را خیالی می نوشتی، فقط اسم ایران و تهران را میاوردی و وقایع و شخصیت‌ها همه تخیلی.
گوینده‌ی کتاب صوتی هم افتضاح بود وقتی به کلمات فارسی میرسید، یکی دو نمونه از اشتباه‌هاش:
غرب‌زادگی\غرب‌زدغی\غرب‌زادغی
کو کوزه‌گار و کوزه‌خوار و کوزه‌فروش

‌البته بعضی قسمتهای کتاب هم بود که دوست داشتم، مثلا بخش هایی که از کودکیشان و پدر و مادر و عمویشان میگفت بد نبود اما بقیه‌اش آنقدر به نظرم بد بود که این بخشها را هم پوشاند.

[Lilisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A character driven novel with multiple complex relationships, Man of My Time is a reflection of the conflicted decisions and paths in life individuals are forced to make during political upheavals that will forever impact their lives. Hamid Mozaffarian is one such individual, the older of two sons of a father working for the Iranian government during the time of then Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. In 1953, a U.S.-backed coup resulted in the ousting of the prime minister leading to years of instability and uncertainty, culminating with the 1979 revolution. As in any sustained political unrest - autocracy raises its ugly head. These are the formative years for Hamid - as a young boy, teenager, and young adult, he’s idealistic, naive, and craves the love and affection of his father. But idealism and disillusionment soon collide leading to an internal maelstrom, a conflicted young revolutionary, and a pivotal decision that will lead to an irrevocable estrangement from his family. While his parents and brother elect to immigrant, Hamid much against his father’s wishes, elects to remain in Iran, convinced that all will be well. The storyline takes place in the present - with Hamid on a government trip New York City, where he meets his mother and brother after decades. His father is dead, and his mother has asked him to fulfill his father’s wish - for his ashes to be taken back to his beloved Iran. However, most of the storyline unfolds in retrospect. We go back in time with Hamid as he traces the trajectory of his life, his childhood friends, his family, his decisions, meeting his wife, the birth of their daughter, their stormy relationship, and up to the present day. We move back and forth in time to understand who Hamid is today and where his future lies. Like the author’s first book, The Septembers of Shiraz, this is a finely crafted novel, layered, and multi-dimensional. I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it. It’s one that needs time to absorb, to understand before we judge, and to appreciate the power of storytelling. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Ari Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious about why this didn't make a bigger splash when it was published in April, after a glowing review by Rebecca Makkai on Page 1 of the NYTimes Book Review. I'd like to think that it was just bad timing: the Covid panic and the mental fog that made serious reading too much of a heavy lift. But this was definitely worth the wait for my local library to finally reopen for take-out orders, as it did recently.

This is an elegantly structured first-person character study that opens up into a portrait of an entire generation who came of age during the Iranian Revolution. Hamid Mossafarian, our first-person narrator and self-absorbed protagonist, almost immediately alienates himself from the reader: a cruel, impulsive, opportunistic, egotistical know-it-all who betrayed his youthful idealism-- and all those who loved him unconditionally-- to become complicit in a corrupt and abusive regime as a prison interrogator.

Sofer begins with Hamid spending a week in New York in the entourage of the Foreign Minister, attending the U.N., but tunnels back to his childhood in an educated, bourgeois family under the Shah's rule and forward to his own failed marriage and destructive relationship with his daughter.
Given his elusiveness and unreliability, and tendency to rationalize his choices as necessary for his own self-preservation, we realize that Hamid has made unforgivable compromises. In some cringeworthy set pieces involving his estranged family, Hamid continues to self-destructively lash out at those who might be in a position to offer him absolution. But Sofer is closely attuned to human psychology, and her prose style is so sharp and evocative on the sentence-to-sentence level, that this became a deeply humane and moving experience.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Also titled: The Beginning of My Downfall.

I love a book set in a different time and culture; one can learn so much.

Set mostly in Iran, but partially in New York City, "...this book tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran".

A solid 4.

I was into the book from the start and my interest only waned a bit at the end.

This book is beautifully written. I noted many instances of phrases that were fabulously descriptive:

"As we ate in silence, I felt once more the familiar weight of time, its incapacity to contain the past."

a shower--"...the vanishing steam, which seemed, just then, like human breath."

"...conducted a triage of his belongings, condensing his life into one suitcase."

and many more.

A man in confict with himself [and his family--parents and sibling, wife and child].

A bureaucrat following his path--or can he alter it? Does he have an excuse? A way out? Does he want one?

An interrogator trying to figure out where he belongs --is his path right or wrong? What is his place in the system and how does it conflict [or not] with his family, memories, past, future].

Set in Iran before the Shah and through the ayatollah, the book covers a lot of territory.

Recommend.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 but due to the incredible writing, I did have to round up. I couldn't stand the narrator. He, for me, was just despicable, a disturbing read for me. Yes, Iran during the Shah and after were informative and exposed me to things I "knew" but didn't grapple with until the book. It is an intensive look into character development. I just couldn't find anything to make me stop snearing at and disliking him; he was a very unsympathetic character.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book for me. The writing was fantastic - vividly descriptive in a smart and crisp way but not over done. I really like when I feel like I am in the head of the narrator, which in this case was a mostly very dark place to be. Also it was so interesting to “see” Tehran evolve over the course of the last 40 years.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written moving tale of complex decisions made during turbulent times in Tehran, Iran following the path of one young man and his family.


Library Loan

[Deanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heartbreaking. Ultimately hopeful. Lots of observations about class, and the way we mimic our parents and pass down trauma. I’m some ways this book felt very realistic..but there was a physicality missing. It will ring true to people who live deeply embedded in their heads. It takes a stab at portraying a man who finally takes responsibility for his choices and the life he’s created for himself...but it doesn’t quite get me there. I may come back to this and give it another star if it keeps me thinking/feeling.

[Victoria Rodríguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book surprised me. A few days ago, I visited the library. I saw the cover of this book, which caught my attention. Not knowing what it was about, I decided to bring it home. As I start reading it, I realize that the story takes place in part in Iran, a country from which I have been learning a lot lately. This story is about Hamid Mozaffarian, who is a faithful and patriotic man for his country. Hamid has worked for several years as an interrogator in the Iranian regime. One day, he was invited by the government to participate in a diplomatic mission in New York City. Without hesitation, Hamid accepts he knows that his family lives in this city. The day comes when the Mozzaffarian family receives a visit from Hamid, they give him the bad news that his father has passed away. Devastated, Hamid learns that his father's dying wish is for his ashes to rest in Iran. This request is not simple because there are a lot of procedures and authorizations. Hamid had not seen his family for a long time. It is a book that made me reflect on how people can hold in their hearts so much bitterness, grudges, as well as happy moments. I think Hamid's situation is complicated, to face these feelings when suddenly they tell you that a dear relative has passed away. I would have liked to know the views of his parents. But I honestly think Hamid's point of view was quite interesting. His mission kept me intrigued throughout the book, as well as his opinions upon his family. It is a book I recommend if you want to learn more about this emotionally compelling story.

[Kathy Reback · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really 3.5 stars...don't know how to signify a half! The demotion of one half star is due to the clumsiness of some of the expository writing. The author knows that hardly anyone in her reader audience will know the history of Iran pre-Ayatollah and even fewer pre-Shah. As a result characters have to have awkward conversation where they explain things to each other that they would clearly know. I have no good suggestions for the author about this; I guess it was just unavoidable. The book follows the personal and political evolution of Hamid who becomes part of the rebellion against the shah and then becomes complicit in the abuses of those who replace him, all the while thinking he can reform the system from within. This is, of course, specific to Iran, but also has parallels to our own situation. Mitch McConnell, I'm looking at you here.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most masterfully written books I think I've read. It's a noir about a Persian man who joins the '79 Revolution at great expense to his country, his family, and himself. He makes a decision at eighteen that he simply can never come back from. It nails the culture and spirit of the Iranian people--their almost genetic darkness, the way they marinate in sadness, and then are constantly acting from that sadness. This book checked a lot of personal boxes for me. But it's also just a top-notch piece of literature. And for the record, definitely one of the best uses of first person POV I've seen--not only does it make for a much richer character examination, but there's also so much interesting blank space left with regard to the other characters in the story, just as in life.

[Yonit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sofer is a brilliant author but I found this to be a challenging read because the main character was so unsympathetic. A complex story that demonstrates how those who get caught up in political movements are frequently led astray.

[Marcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well written and very interesting fictional autobiography of a man in constant conflict with himself. Coming of age during a tumultuous time in Iran molds him into a man whose actions resulted in dire consequences to his family, friends, wife, daughter and ultimately to himself.

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening lines of this fascinating novel are like being asked to choose door number 1, 2, or 3 . . . which one beckons loudest? Can you relate to not talking to a parent for 38 years but being the recipient of his ashes? Check. How about being (or knowing) an immigrant confined to constraints laid in place by the government? Check (for anyone who talks to people). Do you understand how hard it is for the followers of a faith to follow religious rules in a secular society? Check! How do we (or will we) handle the ashes of our parents' lives? This fascinating novel had a lot of substance that kept me reading and thinking and often nodding in enthusiastic--and sometimes sad--recognition.

[Fran Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.9

[Kevin]

Dalia Sofer: Man of My Time (2020)

Timeline
1. Today: 2017
2.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Hamid Mozaffarian & Noushin Taheri
- I was born summer of 1960
- tall, broad-shouldered, deep black eyes cradled inside ashen crescents, a naked skull, and not a gram of excess fat—an exquisite, indignant creature
- I was a revolutionary
- 1979 summer: parted with my parents and only brother
- 1997: interrogated Noushin while working for the Ministry of Intelligence as an interrogator
- Noushin:
(a) being arrested and interrogated in 1997 for bootlegging and watching illegal movie Z
(b) she was then age 25 (so born 1972) w/ graduate art degree working as an associate at Anahita art gallery and living on Ziba Street; use metallic eyeliner
(c) spent weekends at a museum or in Park-e Mellat
(d) cappuccino at Café de France on Gandhi Street her favorite
(e) 2009: left me w/o daughter Golnaz; 2014: Golnaz joined to live w/ her after an accursed night; I didn’t try to stop her out of an act of pure benevolence
- 2017:
(a) Delegate in Charge of European and American Matters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (my boss Minister’s Van Dyke type beard)
(b) divorcing her through legal proceedings
(c) my father died of heart attack during a morning walk by the East River in NYC, a block from their apartment
- Golnaz: my daughter born 2000
- our first and only family trip: a summer visit to Isfahan when she brought her green valise; three of us eating ice cream under the columns of Chehel Sotoun, my reflection in the old Safavid palace pool


Sadegh Mozaffarian (dad) & Monir Farahani (mom)

- Sadegh:
(a) born 2 weeks early on a ferry crossing the contested river Shatt al-Arab (by Iraq)/Arvand Roud (by Iran), exact birth spot be that past the juncture w/ Karun but before the fork of Tigris and Euphrates; leaving my dad “stateless” and close to border of an Arab land
(b) eldest child of his parents w/ XX siblings including Majid
(c) perfectionist; always impeccably dressed—a necktie and a suit (often Italian-cut), even on the hottest days; an old-world air about him—he knew how deep to bow, how often to smile, when to engage and when to retreat
(d) doctor of art history, professor for a time at Tehran University;
(e) hermetic scholar; affable to all and an intimate of none; a constant melancholy, fragile and impervious; always alone
(f) c. 1950: started working on his magnum opus, a compendium of Iranian art, which is his beloved encyclopedia
(g) 1968: accepted a top position at the Ministry of Culture
(h) 1969: recently employed by the Ministry of Culture as director of national archives, been recruited as a member of the Commission of Dramatic Arts to censor films
(i) 1972: a government endowment whereby he expanded his study to the apartment above ours and hired 3 scholars who showed up w/ Samsonite briefcases every morning at 7: Monsieur Hulot (French favoring Pierre Cardin trench coats)/Earl of Sandwich (stout Englishman w/ bulbous nose)/Yasser Maghz-Pahn or big-brained Yasser (Persian, a reputed genius consuming much marzipan)
(j) 1979: Monsieur Hulot and Earl of Sandwich left for their home countries and Yasser remained
- Monir:
(a) unfulfilled socialite
(b) a sucker for anything remotely continental
(c) Swiss-educated and claimed royal ancestry

- in earlier days, family vacationed in Paris and Barcelona and Rome
-
-
- in a leap of faith, had bought three plots at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery—for himself, my mother, and Uncle Majid
- did something to his friend Houshang, “to work for this government one must relinquish integrity” Uncle Majid once reminded him
- Sadegh drive Paykan v. Majid drive Simca

Omid Mozaffarian
- my younger brother born 1963; we parted in 1979 when I was 19 he 16 and now 2017 we’ve been parted for 38 yrs I am now 57 he 54
- Omid means hope
- black eyes
- Divorced w/ a son but son in ex’s custody so hardly any chance to see
- Ex was daughter of an Iranian real estate developer in Los Angeles
- paying her alimony out of meagre income of a translator
-

Ahmad Mozaffarian & Nasrin Mozaffarian (my paternal grandparents)

- Ahmad: for years a shift supervisor at the oil refinery in Abadan; a few years after my father’s birth, worked his way into a government job in Tehran becoming a clerk in the Office of Statistics and Civil Registration where he was the issuer of birth certificates and collector of population statistics; the job left him in a perennial state of tabulation
- Nasrin: born in Ahvaz (capital of Khuzestan Province) and part Arab, in a perennial state of justification regarding her origins and her right to be counted among her husband’s census tallies
- my father entering academia and later the Ministry of Culture made them proud, shown by the way they dressed up whenever they came to see us: Ahmad in a suit one size too large, Nasrin in some shapeless geometric patterned dress and black patent pumps

Majid Mozaffarian & Azar (Uncle and Aunt)
- My uncle who had fairer skin than any of the Mozaffarians
- a house gardener who held no aspiration to be anything else, disappointment to my father (his older brother) and familial humiliation to my mother
- has 3 clients in north Tehran: a Jewish steel industrialist, a wistful widower with a passion for tulips, and a professor of mathematics with a blond Irish wife whom everyone called “the Englishwoman.”
- More than once my father offered to use his connections at the Ministry of Culture to get him a job at one of the city’s municipal parks, say, the Niavaran garden or Shahanshahi Park, but Uncle Majid declined. “I would never work for anything named Shahanshah—king of kings,” he said. “Be it man or park.”
- Lousy driver of an aquamarine Simca, killed in a car crash in 1970.10 (when I was 10) at Aladaglar Mountains near Tabriz and buried in Tehran at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery
- Majid and Azar were on a 2-week vacation to visit Azar’s family in Tabriz when he was killed; they went there by train from Tehran but then, in Tabriz, he had a fight w/ Azar and afterwards drive a car there and crashed the car at the mountains
- Before death installed a German train set in my living room and gave me prayer stone & stayed w/ me overnight in our garden (my father punished me for spilling chocolate milk on the train set and causing the train unmovable)
- His knowing smile and his black bowler hat is all I remember about him
- Azar: professional grumbler; germophobia; homemade own outfits (self-made polyester knit skirt)
-

Ardeshir Khan Farahani & Ziba (my maternal parents)
- Ardeshir
(a) w/ Shah Abbas-style mustache, our family’s supplier of French porcelain, not care much for his impractical academic son-in-law and call him “Don Mozaffarian, man of Shatt al-Arab”, cut all financial support for his daughter after her marriage
(b) cashmere-coated; owns an antique shop; gave my mother a porcelain bowl filled with dates when attending Uncle Majid’s funeral
- Ziba
(a) proud progeny of one of 115 surviving children of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar; accountant and all-around manager of the antique shop

[Izzy Senechal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalia Sofer's "Man of My Time" is a heartbreaking story of brokenness, alienation and sacrifice. The novel follows Hamid Mozaffarian, a disgraced revolutionary and former interrogator for the Islamic Republic of Iran, who gradually destroys every human connection in his life, first over commitment to ideology, later over commitment to his own suffering. Hamid is haunted by his sins, past and present—chief among them his betrayal and subsequent estrangement from his intellectual, yet emotionally distant father. Before he can reconcile with his family, however, Hamid's father dies. His final wish: To have his ashes scattered back in his homeland, a gesture that not only symbolizes a return to his roots, but is also a forbidden, political act.

From the catalyst of his father's death, Sofer brilliantly weaves Hamid's tumultuous past with his desolate present, demonstrating how his isolation from others became a self-fulfilling (perhaps even self-inflicted) prophecy. I also loved how Sofer portrayed Hamid's complicated self-image, which is mutable to whatever environment he's in. Nowhere is this illustrated better than in Hamid's early admittance that his mind will stick whatever ideas he hears or reads in the present, a flaw which perfectly encapsulates why he acts so impulsively throughout the novel. It's a fascinating character study, and one that really sticks with you after you've put the book down.

Ultimately, "Man of My Time" is not a story about redemption. Rather, it's a cautionary tale about losing yourself to corruption and disillusionment. The ending is a little predictable (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything), but I get the sense that Sofer intended it to be that way: foreseeable, yet inevitable.

[Massoumeh · Rating 1 out of 5]

A disappointing book!
Full of factual mistakes!

Just imagine a delagate from Iran to the UN general assembly walks around in New York, visiting his family..., but nor Iranian security gaurds neither American authorities stop him!!!

Or this one: Hamid goes vacation whenever he wants! As if he works for an art gallery not Intelligence Ministry! Then, after years working as an Interrogator and claiming that he had been obliged to be an Interrogatore, he suddenly resignes like a piece of cake! You can't just resign from that organisation! It's impossible!!!

There are a lot of mistakes in the book that shows that the author does not know how are things in Iran after revolution! She just has heard things and hasn't touched them!

The worst thing about the book is the picture that it draws for today's Iran. The book says that there is still a group among political men that want to make things better and do their best!
Actually it's a wrong picture for Iran in 2020! At least it is 3 years that Iranians do not have hope for any political men! they shouted it in streets in their protests in 2017:
Reformists, principlists, finished everythings!

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalia Sofer's MAN OF MY TIME offers an intimate character study of a multilayered, complex and unlikeable character who is also undeniably compelling. Hamid Mozaffarian, who has made a career as an interrogator in an Iranian prison, created unbridgeable distance from his family when he reported his own father to the regime, forcing his family to flee to the United States, Now, over thirty years later, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past when his mother demands that he transport his father's ashes from New York to Tehran so that his father can be buried in his homeland. We see Hamid reflect on his actions both past and present and gradually become engrossed in the story.
It did take me a while to get into this story, mostly because of its poetic writing style. However, once I was drawn in, I did not want to stop reading. This is a book that will leave you questioning your own moral standards as you gain sympathy for Hamid and see the rationale for some horrible things he has done. This is an exquisitely written, thought-provoking book.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just can’t figure out why I did not like this novel. The themes of rebellion, betrayal, and estrangement are especially heavy as they are passed along generations. People contradict themselves all the time. They get caught up in ideologies and may end up in situations they didn’t intend as one decision becomes the next. Maybe most people haven’t experienced bad decisions to the extent that this character has, but life does take us in situations we hadn’t imagined. But the writing is super clunky. Farsi terms are translated into English within quotes, distracting me from the scene. I never got into the plot. As much as I wanted to feel the narrator’s inner conflict, it just never drew me in.

[Ernie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a new book of the year from my reading of this brilliant depiction of a young man’s struggle to be released from his solipsism that has trapped him into being part of the system that devastated his family and his nation, Iran, from 1960 to 2009. The writer, Sofer masters the art of encapsulating the whole tragic era from the betrayal of the Mossadech government which nationalised the oil industry in 1972, to the revolution that ended the Shah’s monarchy and the continuing disaster of the rule of the Ayatollah, his successors and the Iran-Iraq war.

With a first person narration, Hamid the talented second son of an art historian whose life’s work was an encyclopaedia of Persian art, is in New York City as assistant to the Iranian minister making a UN visit but personally to attend the memorial event for his father’s death and to obey his will that his ashes be scattered in Tehran. Sofer moves his narration forward and back in time, relating his childhood’s continuing competition with his father whom he believes is locked into the past and his father’s inability to relate to the boy whom he and even the younger brother, teases with nicknames ‘Fighting Cock’ and ‘Captain Prick’. The boy expresses his emerging identity in cartoons that echo those we now know from Banksy and which he similarly prints onto the city walls as a commentary on the regime. Despite this and other conflicts, Hamid is a sensitive and talented cartoonist, reader and musician who cannot help but be influenced by his father’s culture and especially the epic of Gilgamesh, The Confederacy of the Birds and even Death of a Salesman. However, the father too, despairs at having ‘become the system’ and his secret betrayal remains secret in the novel for some time until Hamid decides that he too, has become the puppeteer and the trickster.

Hamid reads Marx and Lenin and supports the socialism that he thought would come through the overthrow of the Shah. He enjoys his relationship with Minoo, unmarried and living together, previously impossible and subsequently more so in an increasingly dangerous city where revolutionary guards stop and search and arrest people arbitrarily. When he is about to be arrested, a more radical revolutionary friend, Akbari saves him but blackmails him into becoming an interrogator. ‘To survive was to comply.’ This key event not only echoes the choice of Germans in the 1930’s but the choices we all have when faced with a government of injustice and evil. Sofer’s achievement is not just to provide this insight into history; indeed, unlike many historical novels, she gives only sketchy details of the city and few references to the main events of that era. Her focus is on the psychology of her protagonist. Furthermore, she makes his acquiescence and the anguish of that decision to be a metaphor for the whole nation of Iran, ‘trapped in the trajectory of some unknown misfortune’. There are also echoes of Camus and The Plague, here. His first interrogation is against the cartoonist who was his childhood inspiration.

The personal is very much the political in this novel. HIs family flee to New York but he cannot. Why not? Minoo leaves and Hamid marries Noushin and they have a daughter to whom , in contrast with his father, he is close: she lives with him after the marriage ends in divorce by his wife but she too, leaves. These relationships fluctuate over years as Sofer moves the narration through dramatic time gaps, forward and back. These increase the pace of the story as the writer probes Hamid’s inability to escape the binds in which he had wrapped himself. Akbari becomes Prosecutor and Hamid surrenders to his demands every time. He rationalises: ‘There is, in the end, no deliverance’. Linguistically he is aware but uses ‘the language of masquerade that had infiltrated our mother tongue’. ‘We were trapped in an ache from which there could be no exit.’ ‘Most things are true and untrue at the same time.’ In New York, he despises the expatriate writers profiting from their Iranian experience as if ‘grief could be packaged and labeled, applauded and peddled.’ Sofer’s achievement is that she never does that. Hamid’s anguish relates to all of us. What could we have done, living in these violent times of injustice and betrayal? Who was it who wrote: If ever I had to choose between betraying my family or my country, I hope that I would have the courage to betray my country?

[Rl Jrg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing up along with LA’s Persian community did not prepare me for the drama of Man of my Time. In fact, I don’t think there is much relation between Iran’s history, or the Persian diaspora’s, and the monstrosity of this character, Hamid; he’s just not well.

While well written, it seems unfair for Man of my Time to filter a massive set of historical data, from the failed socialism of Mossadegh Iran’s sort of vernacular leader, through to the neo-colonial Pahlavi reign, to the theocratic horror that followed, as if these regimes (or times) in any way impacted Hamid. That said, to say that Hamid’s pathology drives him, and not his social circumstances, violates the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Still, the man had to be mad, because he could, should, and actually wanted to flee with his family--but for a (here the bougie phrase would be faute de mieux), pathological need to call himself to their attention by destroying everyone around him. The conflict here can be stated as: Man wants love but hates those who could possibly love him so he never gets loved so he hates everyone even more including himself. Or maybe it resolves down to chemistry: Could there have been too much lead paint in his childhood and that blunted Hamid’s emotional growth?

Man of my Time took a while for me to enjoy. I almost think they changed editors half way and for the better. It has very cool insights into what Iran was like as recently as 20 years ago, and strong data on what it has always been like; particularly interesting in terms of graphing how ownership of the means of production passed from the Pahlavi bourgeoisie to a series of trusts run to date by and for the benefit of those who won--the clerics and their thugs. So it portrays a timeless Iran; a huge, wealthy, intolerant, and banal society in the Gatopardo’s style: for everything to change, everything has to remain the same.

To boot, Sofer, as good authors do, showers her text with beautifully crafted sentences that express deep, timeless, cross-identity human needs, like:
“The point is that in the autobiography there is a time-honored tradition of redemption and repentance, which is a concept dear to all: towbeh for Muslims, teshuvah for Jews, penance for Christians—who doesn’t appreciate a good metamorphosis story, a passage from wickedness to virtue?”

Clearly the thread that shocked me the most could be summarized as the painful hatred of a son for his father. (An opportunity I lacked). I think of Hamid as a weak son hating his dad so much--for no particular reason other than the dad did not pay much attention to the son--that the son destroyed both the dad and the son. Absentee, fragile, or mediocre fathers be warned.

[Marvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Iranian diplomat arrives in New York City to attend a United Nations session and learns that his estranged father, who fled Iran years earlier along with the diplomat's mother and younger brother, has died, and the family wants him to speak at a memorial and to return a portion of his ashes to Iran. What follows is an account of his life that tries to explain his relationship to his father and to his country. This is right in my wheelhouse, a novel that elaborates on the dictum that the personal is political and the political is personal. Set almost entirely in Tehran, with a few scenes in NYC, it's a deeply personal story of the diplomat and his family, set in the context of Iranian politics and culture from the 1970s to the present, with a number of references to earlier history. (It's reminiscent of the many fine novels set in postrevolutionary China.) And the author manages to make quite compelling the moral wrestlings of an emotionally cold character who does many despicable things. Still, it's one of those books that I admired more than I personally enjoyed or appreciated. The meaning of many of the cultural references, scenes, and details, and even the vocabulary, some of which I could not find in the dictionary, went over my head, as did the high intellectual level of much of the dialog. Yet it's certainly a fine, ambitious book, and I'm very glad I read it. A postscript: The author, a native of Tehran who now lives in NYC, employed an interesting device: that is, many of the chapters begin with something like a thesis statement. ("My break with Akbari occurred over a dead goldfish" [chap. 34]. "Late in that summer of 2009, Noushin left me for the first time" [chap. 35].) What follows this opening statement does not at first seem directly related, but eventually the chapter elaborates its opening sentence. I suppose that in the 19th century, the author would have incorporated these statements into a chapter title ("in which ...").