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 someone he no longer recognizes. 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.”
About the Author
Dalia Sofer is the author of the national bestseller The Septembers of Shiraz, winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, long-listed for the Orange Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book. It was published in sixteen countries. Sofer is a recipient of a Whiting Award, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She was born in Tehran, Iran, and moved to the United States with her family as a child.
Industry Reviews
With Sofer's considerable talents, the betrayals (of both self and others) that leave Hamid a brittle shell of a man are fully worthy of our intense gaze . . . [Man of My Time is] finely wrought, a master class in the layering of time and contradiction that gives us a deeply imagined, and deeply human, soul.
, Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review
Sofer is at her best evoking Hamid's pugnacious youth. The novel's prerevolutionary Iran is a cauldron of disparate discontents . . . The aphoristic elegance of Sofer's writing is one of the book's attractions.
, Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
Assured, accomplished . . . [Sofer's] portrait of [Hamid's] political evolution and interior deterioration is extraordinary . . . Certainly there is some horror and violence in Man of My Time, but it is all the more chilling for its restraint.
, Azadeh Moaveni, TLS
An exploration of how political and social upheavals leave their marks on entire generations, and irrevocably alter those involved . . . Sofer's lyrical, underline-worthy sentences contrast with Hamid's lack of remorse and awareness . . . The novel's most poignant insight derives from the irony that we as readers are trapped in a chronicle of a man who lacks self-awareness.
, Julie Hakim Azzam, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mesmerizing and unsettling . . . The tension between the elegance of Sofer's language and the nihilistic unraveling of her antihero emphasizes the irony of the title, which lays bare the conceit that a person's actions might be excused by historical context. Readers will find Sofer's meditation on power's ability to corrupt as relevant and disturbing as the day's headlines.
, Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In her powerful second novel, Sofer portrays a man whose principles have estranged him from his loved ones . . . A gorgeously written character study that examines, with sensitivity and pathos, the small steps that lead a man down an unexpected and ultimately isolating path."
, Kristine Huntley, Booklist (starred review)
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