Customer Reviews

The Poet Game

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the Poet Game, Sami Amir is an Iranian spy caught between the powers-that-be in Iran, employees of the Libyan government, and United States intelligence services. Everywhere he turns he confronts liars. Though reviewers seem not to have noticed this, the "poet" of the title is a convenient metonym for "liar," as Abdoh spins out his own version of the old Platonic idea that all poets are liars. In this novel all liars are also in their own way poets. Along with "Hunting Down Amanda," "The Poet Game" is the most intelligent thriller to be published in years.

The use of a character that could straddle two worlds was a brilliant idea by S. Abdoh. Although the Iranian and American political philosophies have been at odds for the last two decades, Sami Amir's character and the suspenseful plot of this novel created surprisingly plausible twist of events. A very enjoyable and politically insightful novel.

You often read the back of a literary thriller and see that, yet once again, the author of the book has been compared to the great John Le Carre or even the greater Graham Greene. Usually I take such comparisons with a grain of salt. But being a fan of the genre, I cannot dismiss such comparisons and end up reading the works, often much to my disappointment. There was no disappointment with The POET GAME. This literary thriller pretty much shatters all the boundaries of the genre I have ever come across, and I've come across quite a few in my time. The simplicity of the language and ease with which the story moves is like a contrapuntal dance to a backdrop of terror and betrayal beyond anyone's imagination. The author, Salar Abdoh, knows the territory too well. I don't know if he's been there and done that or if he has access to sources few, if any, readers and even writers of this type of book have. If you want to know the psychology behind what just took place in America on September 11th of 2001 you'd better read this book. I've read many books by other writers who thought they were giving a portrayal of what the men on the other end of the war look like. Well, those authors often failed where Mr. Abdoh succeeds. The book is a tragedy in waiting. I don't want to give more away. I read the first page where the author was describing the different personality traits of various Middle Eastern operatives, and I thought: wow! this guy seems like he's come right out of the trenches of southern Lebanon or some place similar. He may or may not have, but the portrayal he gives is chilling, stupendously written and far above the inanities of your usual thriller with too much gadgetry and not enough psychology. If there is any shortcoming to the work it's that I would have liked the book to go on another hundred pages. I didn't want it to end. But end it did, on a note that well ... I don't want to give the story away.

Sami Amir, the protagonist of The Poet Game, happens to be the man no one can pinpoint. He is as real as your complete lack of attention to anything else going on around your life while reading The Poet Game. The story of a spy who has been sent from the Middle East to counter the likelihood of terrorist plots by radical elements from back home is something that is especially poignant after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Abdoh, himself a writer from that part of the world, seems to know every detail of what he writes about. When I looked at the description at the back of the book, written two years before the crumbling of the Twin Towers, my heart almost stopped. Here are the first few lines of how the book is described by the publisher: IN THE WAKE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING, NEW YORK CITY IS GROUND ZERO FOR AN INTRICATE WEB OF BETRAYALS AND DOUBLE CROSSES IN THE SHADOWY WORLD OF MUSLIM RADICALS. Needless to say, the story pulls you right in and grabs hold of you till the very last sentence..
Abdoh's debut novel is laced with the melancholy of a world that no one dares to comfort. He races us through streets that we've all walked past, maybe even stopped to smoke a cigarette on a warm night. Only this time we try to capture everything -- the man walking behind us, the homeless couple sleeping on the bench, the world of shadows and imminent dangers. My senses were heightened and my eyes opened very wide when reading this work. Sami Amir is located to New York. He is stranded on the most populated, isolated island of the world. Furthermore, it is his first time in NYC. He is a spy born into Islam who happened to attend Catholic schools back home. Furthermore, Sami's Iranian blood is mixed with his mother's American blood. The book is an accomplishment by the highest of standards. To put it down, quickly becomes a game of Mission Impossible. I found myself willingly running after Sami everywhere he goes, wanting to cross his path so he can size me up, the way he does everything else. Abdoh offers up a mix of espionage and high literary prose, and he does this with sheer brilliance. He is an ambitious writer, make no mistake about it. I've read The Poet Game twice by now and realize that even knowing the plot does not make it one bit tedious. I enjoyed it eve more the second time around, staying behind the plotline, trying to catch my breath, trying not to lose sight of what I already know.

Had John Le Carre been born in the middle east and immigrated to America, this is who he'd be. Like one of the thugs from his book, Abdoh grips you by the neck right on page one and drags you (willingly!) through the seamy underbelly of a New York few of us know exists. With crisp prose and wicked ear for dialogue this first novel is an elegy to a young writer's untapped potential... the literary undertones make one hope he breaks from the genre with his next work.

Not much action actually comes to pass in The Poet Game. I wouldn't recommend it for readers who are into shoot `em up action thrillers. Sure, The Poet Game has its share of death - more than its share, actually. But the book is not really about that. If it's about anything, I think, it is about the psychology of power, betrayal and terrorism. More precisely, Islamic terrorism. For this reason, the book is pretty timely. Sami Amir, the protagonist, is the kind of hesitant agent we've seen in other `serious' writers of the genre. But he's also a departure in many ways. I've found myself thinking about Amir again and again ever since finishing the book. He haunts me. And yet I'm not sure if comparisons with Graham Greene, done on the back cover, are quite appropriate. Mr. Abdoh has only written one book, after all. Also, I don't think he has the depth yet that Greene reached in some of his mature masterpieces. Nevertheless, The Poet Game, I feel, is a major accomplishment in its own right. Part literature, part genre, I'm still not sure where to place it in my library. I certainly won't sell it. And that's the highest compliment I can give to an author and his book. There was a point around the middle where I though the plot was slowing a little too much for my espionage driven taste, but in the end that's only a surface criticism. Last word: The Poet Game, recommended strongly.

Opening The Poet Game to start to read it after the World Trade disaster, two of the several reviews inside the book jacket caught my attention. One said that ... "Abdoh has important things to say about the threat of islamic fundamentalist terrorism." Fine, I thought, this is exactly the kind of book I need to be reading right now. The other review that caught my attention, however, was rather of another scale altogether. The reviewer had written on Fox News that "Abdoh has obviously done his homework. His precision depicting New York City streets is almost spooky." Keep in mind that this is a book that came out about a year and a half ago and I may have never come across it if our country had not gone to war with Moslem fundamentalists. As I got into the book and got an intimate portrayal of the many Moslem characters I began to become wary. Not in a bad way, but in a way one feels when one thinks they are in the hands of someone who is taking them to places not too many people dare or know how to go to. So I read on, keeping that review of Fox News in mind. Abdoh's precise depictions of New York City streets were spooky. It was as if he had spent time hanging out with these terrorists and instead of giving them up to the FBI, he had chosen to write a book about them. I'm not accusing Salar Abdoh of anything, of course. I'm merely saying that the coincidences between the book and our reality today are just too much to dismiss. I had to read the book in one sitting. Not even two sitting. And when I was finished I knew that I had just been introduced to a writer whose like I had never known before. I'm sure Mr. Abdoh is no terrorist or spy for any agency in the world. Yet he does seem to know THINGS, if you know what I mean. He puts his information to immaculate use, but I can't help asking the same question that goes on over and over in my head: how does Salar Abdoh know these things? Furthermore, what does he plan to write next? Does he have some sort of a crystal bowl? Should we wait for his next novel to find out what new tragedy will hit us next? I don't know if any of our great American writers can answer this; I have a feeling Mr. Abdoh might be able to, though I can't say that that puts my mind any more at ease.

I noticed that this book had become PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Daily Book of the Day: The Poet Game by Salar Abdoh.

Though the book was originally published in 2000 Salar
Abdoh's first novel,The Poet Game, speaks much more
poignantly to us now. The focus is the internal life of
Sami, a 30-year old Iranian spy who is sent to New York in
the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.Sami's
mission is to thwart a Muslim extremist plot to attack
major New York monuments.
The literate half-American hero embodies the complicated
and often ambivalent feelings such "operatives" have
during missions. The book is far closer to Graham Greene
or John LeCarre than Tom Clancy. The story itself is
notable not for its violence or intrigue, but for
its ability to offer snapshots of the complicated
politics that motivates the various players and
the deepening paranoia and self-doubt that afflicts them.
When the hero, Sami, falls in love with his American
contact Ellena--a spy/stripper who keeps a bomb at
the ready under her bed--his sense of duty is called
even further into question. At one point he says
he believes that he and Ellena are just "failed poets
trying to get it right in the wrong trade." The PW
also called Sami "an unusually sensitive action hero"
and the book "entertaining and heart-quickening."

I devoured this book in two sittings. Really couldn't put it down. I think this writer has created a whole new subgenre in the world of spy thrillers. A kind of spy book that's never been written before, with characters from the Middle East who are fully portrayed instead of just being cardboard. I find it strange, though, that he's only catalogued under Fiction, instead of Espionage and Thriller. Because I would have never found him if I hadn't been become curious by his name.

I came upon the Poet Game by a referal from a friend. Salar Abdoh's Poet Game is a remarkably well written book that takes you face to face with those hidden terrorist charactors that in this book seem as real and cunning as the real world. If you like good fiction and espionage with a new visions, I promise you will not be disappointed in the Poet Game