Sami Amir, the protagonist of Salar Abdoh's debut novel, The Poet Game, is hardly your run-of-the-mill spook. The son of an American mother and an unknown Iranian father, raised in a Catholic orphanage outside of Tehran, and fluent in English, he has, until recently, made his living as a translator for an operation known as "the Office." Sami's employer is an ultrasecret organization that monitors the actions of the Iranian military and intelligence services in an effort to undercut the influence of hard-line Islamic extremists in the government. To this end, it has sent Sami into the field--to New York, in fact--to thwart an act of terrorism.
Pretending to be an operative for an organization known as Section 19, our man from Tehran must infiltrate a bizarre world of Islamic militants, mad-bomber wannabes, reluctant middlemen, and one or two guys who might even be the real deal. Between the Libyans, Palestinians, Pakistanis, and odd-ball American black Moslems, it's getting hard to keep track of the players--and their differing agendas--without a scorecard. Then Sami's contact from the Office shows up and confuses matters even more. An American, a woman, a poet and part-time stripper--and possibly a double agent--Ellena is not what he was expecting. As Sami penetrates deeper into the labyrinthine world of Middle Eastern politics, he is also drawn reluctantly into a love affair with her--a relationship he characterizes as "two failed poets trying to get it right in the wrong trade."
Salar Abdoh is aiming high with The Poet Game--a spy story that is more than just a thriller, a noir novel that transcends pulp fiction. If, at times, the plot becomes overly convoluted and suffers from one double-double-cross too many, Abdoh's elegant prose and deft characterization make up for it. Sami might be a failed poet, but he is no romantic when it comes to his profession: "For what was any of this but another means of making a living--no different really than performing open-heart surgery or collecting garbage at night." And in the end, it is this sad, clear-eyed vision of himself and his world that makes Sami Amir's fate worth caring about. --Sheila Bright
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Balancing bombing conspiracies and international arms trading with literary allusions and psychological intrigue, this debut spy novel aims high. Sami Amir is an Iranian with an American mother, a Catholic school education and a job as a translator. He is reluctantly pressed into counterintelligence service by a secret Iranian government agency and sent to New York City to infiltrate an Arab terrorist group called Section 19 that seems intent on committing acts of sabotage following the World Trade Center bombing. After a brief internment in a grungy Brooklyn tenement, he finds himself suspended dangerously in a struggle between American and Middle Eastern intelligence forces. He soon falls in love with one of his contacts in the States, an American spy/stripper named Ellena. As their romance progresses, Sami makes some startling discoveries--for starters, Ellena keeps a bomb under her bed--that put their affections to the test. Meanwhile, he manages to survive various attacks by terrorist thugs, striking back on occasion and eventually realizing he has been set up by his own employers. The novel races through a series of atmospheric settings--including a warehouse in Brooklyn, a public garden in the East Village and a political science conference at Columbia University--all sketched with a winning economy of detail. Operatives from a host of Middle Eastern countries are vividly described, too, and Abdoh's dialogue is tight, despite some lapses into self-conscious noir. Sami himself is an unusually sensitive action hero, with an appreciation of literature, an eye for poignant detail and a sentimental side. As he says, he believes he and Ellena are just "failed poets trying to get it right in the wrong trade," and samplings of Ellena's poetry appear throughout. Such attempts to infuse the story with higher meaning sometimes fall flat, but this is nevertheless an entertaining and heart-quickening debut. Agent, Watkins-Loomis. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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