City of Lies
Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran
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Narrated by:
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Sylvia Lisle
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By:
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Ramita Navai
About this listen
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.
©2014 Ramita Navai (P)2014 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.
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revolutionary read
- By David Brown on 04-05-18
By: Carmen Aguirre
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Street of Eternal Happiness
- Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
- By: Rob Schmitz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.
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Deserving of better audio
- By Rachael on 02-19-18
By: Rob Schmitz
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Daring to Drive
- A Saudi Woman's Awakening
- By: Manal al-Sharif
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A ferociously intimate memoir by a devout woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women's right to drive.
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The rain begins with a single drop
- By Sara on 07-01-17
By: Manal al-Sharif
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They Said They Wanted Revolution
- A Memoir of My Parents
- By: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Narrated by: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.
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I learned so much. Great pacing, felt like I time-traveled
- By Jess Fuchs on 02-07-22
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Street Without a Name
- Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
- By: Kapka Kassabova
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and grew up under the drab, muddy, gray mantle of one of communism’s most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other places. But when Bulgaria was formally inducted to the European Union she decided it was time to return to the home she had spent most of her life trying to escape. What she found was a country languishing under the strain of transition. This two-part memoir of Kapka’s childhood and return explains life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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Good start, but ended up not liking the author
- By Giselle on 11-02-21
By: Kapka Kassabova
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Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
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Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- By: Katherine Boo
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.
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An Antidote for Shantaram
- By Dr. on 06-14-12
By: Katherine Boo
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Nine Parts of Desire
- The Hidden World of Islamic Women
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Geraldine Brooks
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women is the story of Brooks’ intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. In fundamentalist Iran, Brooks finagles an invitation to tea with the ayatollah’s widow—and discovers that Mrs. Khomeini dyes her hair.
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Auto-ethnography and good research
- By Verna on 09-26-13
By: Geraldine Brooks
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The Imam's Daughter
- My Desperate Flight to Freedom
- By: Hannah Shah
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Hannah Shah is an Imam's daughter. She lived the life of a devout Muslim in a family of Pakistani Muslims in England, but behind the front door, she was a caged butterfly. For many years, her father abused her in the cellar of their home. At 16, she discovered a plan to send her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, and she gathered the courage to run away. Relentlessly hunted by her angry father and brothers, who were intent on executing an "honor" killing, she moved from house to house in perpetual fear to escape them.
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only half of the story is in Audible!
- By ellen on 02-09-11
By: Hannah Shah
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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The Lightless Sky
- A Twelve-Year-Old Refugee's Harrowing Escape from Afghanistan and His Extraordinary Journey Across Half the World
- By: Gulwali Passarlay
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen, Susan Duerden
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban, who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans, who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali's mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the 12-year-old across eight countries, from the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan through Iran and Europe to Britain. Over the course of 12 harrowing months, Gulwali endured imprisonment, hunger, cruelty, brutality, loneliness, and terror - and nearly drowned crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
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A Face for Refugees
- By Daryl on 12-10-16
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The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
What listeners say about City of Lies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chelsie
- 12-01-14
Stories from a City Oft Misunderstood
What did you like best about this story?
I loved the journalistic edge of each of Navai's stories. Each vignette shined a light on a corner of Tehran revealing the truth behind each character's circumstances. Not unlike American society, wealth, gender and birthright play a staring role in determining ones options in Iran. Where few options remain, character's resort to the most primal druthers of death, sex and lies. A city divided by its differences is ultimately connected geographically and metaphorically by Valiasr Street a symbol of common struggle of a culture transformed in just one generation by religion and politics. Overall, the author brilliantly unveils a culture, its people, and its evolution in a sea of one note descriptions of a city, country, and region.
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3 people found this helpful
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- marykk
- 09-19-14
Don't make assumptions about an Islamic state
Because I lived in Isfahan, Iran for 3 years right up to the Iranian revolution and the ouster of the shah, I was especially intrigued by this book. We've all seen and heard of the changes in Iran since the revolution, from the taking of the embassy hostages and on through the recent presidential election and likely assumed that many of the things that go on in the West, both good and bad, don't happen in a regime that touts itself of being Islamic. This book tells us that all of it does go on, both good and bad, with the added element of government repression. Thank you, Ms. Navai, for giving us an insider's view of life in Teheran.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bob E.
- 12-21-15
A Very Interesting Account
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The author did a nice job describing the lives of various people living in Tehran and in the process explained the rationale of many of the muslim customs. The book is interesting & informative.
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- Leonard
- 10-19-14
Impossible to Put Down
I did not know what to expect when I selected this book, but I am glad I did. Navai gives us a glimpse of life into modern day Teheran and it is an ugly picture indeed. Decades ago, Eric Hoffer wrote the "True Believer" an examination of extreme regimes and how they are born and survive - if Hoffer were alive to update the book, modern Iran would easily fit in with little revision.
Not all of Navai's characters are helpless pawns or innocent victims, but all suffer at the hands of the regime. The story reinforces my distrust of organized religion.
Lisle's narration is flawless and contributes greatly with a five star rating. I finished the book in two days and found it impossible to put down.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Basha
- 01-09-16
City of lies
Well researched excellent detailed to a point of painful reality. The fact of the matter that there is a big disconnect from north of Tehran and South like Shoosh and stories are painfully hits home. Well done. Thanks
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- Private
- 10-21-18
Not The Whole Story
I requested three books due to a library 'class' recommending some readings dealing with the Middle East... one dealing with Egypt and nearby areas, one I now cannot recall the title of, and this one. This one made me so angry. I felt filthy, like I had viewed porn and participated in it, and I finally could not handle more, and stopped the book. Supposedly, these books would have enabled me to grasp more of different regions, and of Islam. I am a Christian, and neither have visited nor am from these regions, but SURELY there is more to the story than the complete web of lies and deceit, disappointment and betrayals that this book suggests. Surely I can think more kindly of Tehran, than this book of a broken heart. Sadly, I just could not persevere any longer in this story, having gotten through most of chapter 7. If you are cynical, if you believe that the bulk of this city is simply destroyed by evil men who utilize broken economics to gain their own ways with all or nearly all women, including mullahs... then this book is for you. If you believe there is some beauty, some hope, something God designed as redemptive for Tehran, don't read this book.
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