Will I love City of Lies?

I generally have both a fiction and non-fiction book on the go at the same time. One for easy nighttime reading, and one for more earnest contemplation and edification through the day.
Ravita Navai’s first book, for which she won the Royal Society Award for non-fiction, amongst other acclaims, was rather more than I bargained for. It is excellent, deeply troubling and strongly feminist. Based on interviews with eight Iranian men and women of all persuasions, she vividly dissects and exposes the cynicism and dishonesty so rampant in Iran today.
The book’s subtitle is ‘Love, Sex, Death and the Search… show more.

I love to travel and am fascinated by the world we live in and its astonishing diversity of cultures. Iran is a country I’ve yet to visit, and this book is a powerful, at times heart-wrenching account of life in the capital under a harsh, repressive, and unforgiving theocracy.

Through collected accounts of real citizens (names and details changed), Navai explores the extraordinary nature of everyday existence in Tehran as people navigate the hypocrisies, treacheries, taboos, fatwas, the morality police, the ever-watching and interfering government, and more. It is life in a world gone horribly wrong, covering varied tiers of… show more.