Sinaki, Navid: Medusa of the Roses

"Sex, vengeance, and betrayal in modern day Tehran-Navid Sinaki‘s bold and cinematic debut is a queer literary noir following Anjir, a morbid romantic and petty thief whose boyfriend disappears just as they‘re planning to leave their hometown for good. Anjir and Zal are childhood best friends turned adults in love. The only problem is they live in Iran, where being openly gay is criminalized, and the government‘s apparent acceptance of trans people requires them to surgically transition and pass as cis straight people. When Zal is brutally attacked after being seen with another man in public, despite the betrayal, Anjir becomes even more determined to carry out their longstanding plan: Anjir, who‘s always identified with the mythical gender-changing Tiresias, will become a woman, and they‘ll move to a new town for a fresh start as husband and wife. Then Zal vanishes. Stalking and stealing his way through the streets, clubs, library stacks, hotel rooms, and museum halls of Tehran, Anjir‘s morals and gender identity are pushed to new places in the pursuit of Zal, peace, and self-determination. Steeped in ancient Persian and Greek myths, and brimming with poetic vulnerability, subversive bite, and noirish grit, Medusa of the Roses is a page-turning wallop of a story from a bright new literary talent"--