City of Lies, Ramita Navai
City of Lies, Ramita Navai
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City of Lies
Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Author: Ramita Navai

Narrator: Sylvia Lisle

Unabridged: 9 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/02/2014

Synopsis

Ramita Navai gives voice to ordinary Iranians forced to live extraordinary lives: the porn star, the aging socialite, the assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, the dutiful housewife who files for divorce, and the old-time thug running a gambling den.

In today's Tehran, intrigues abound and survival depends on an intricate network of falsehoods: mullahs visit prostitutes, local mosques train barely pubescent boys in crowd-control tactics, and cosmetic surgeons promise to restore girls' virginity. Navai paints an intimate portrait of those discreet recesses in a city where the difference between modesty and profanity, loyalty and betrayal, honor and disgrace is often no more than the believability of a lie.

About Ramita Navai

Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian foreign affairs journalist who has reported from over thirty countries, including South Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador, and Zimbabwe. She has made twenty documentaries for Channel 4's Unreported World series, and she was awarded an Emmy Award for her undercover report from Syria for PBS's Frontline. Ramita has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Iran, and she was the Tehran correspondent for the Times from 2003 to 2006.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nasim on February 02, 2015

I was born and raised in Tehran and have always been looking for a book that shows a picture of Iran close to reality; something different from the one that media tries to impose. Well, one good point about this book was that the writer chose her characters from very different social classes in Iran......more

Goodreads review by Brian on July 17, 2022

Navai spins a series of marvelously street-smart, slightly fictionalized tales of ordinary people, up and down the length of Tehran’s most prominent street. The accounts she focuses on are rich in both comedy and tragedy. These characters feel forced to live lies, hide them, and suffer for them. The......more

Goodreads review by Sharad on November 20, 2014

Out of sheer curiosity about Iran and how life is under the strict rule of the Ayatollahs, I picked this book. I cannot say I am not impressed, but this book is clearly not the kind I expected from a journalist based in Tehran. Ramita Navai starts strong and makes a good plot of bringing to light th......more

Goodreads review by Kexx on July 14, 2022

A shocking factual book of lives in Iran in 2015. Courageous and, I assume, totally honest, it makes me despair in human kind. I’m sure such stories can be told of any city, but this is horrific and stays in the mind. Recommended? Only if you want to upset yourself.......more

Goodreads review by Caitlin on January 30, 2015

I have to admit that before reading this book, my only familiarity with Iran came from reading the fantastic The Complete Persepolis graphic novel. While Persepolis gives you a great sense of a family in turmoil as the Islamic Revolution changes the Iran that they know, Ramita Navai gives a complet......more

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