Then the Fish Swallowed Him

Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man since the unexpected deaths of his father and mother years ago, he is decidedly apolitical—even during the driver’s strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his.

Handcuffed and blindfolded, he is taken to the infamous Evin prison for political dissidents. Inside this stark, strangely ordered world, his fate becomes entwined with Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. The two develop a disturbing yet interdependent relationship, with each playing his assigned role in a high stakes psychological game of cat and mouse, where Yunus endures a mind-bending cycle of solitary confinement and interrogation. In their startlingly intimate exchanges, Yunus’s life begins to unfold—from his childhood memories growing up in a freer Iran to his heartbreaking betrayal of his only friend. As Yunus struggles to hold on to his sanity and evade Saeed’s increasingly undeniable accusations, he must eventually make an impossible choice: continue fighting or submit to the system of lies upholding Iran’s power.

Gripping, startling, and masterfully told, Then the Fish Swallowed Him (HarperVia, 2020) is a haunting story of life under despotism.

Amir Ahmadi Arian started his writing career as a journalist in Iran in 2000. He has published two novels, a collection of stories, and a book of nonfiction in Persian. He also translated from English to Persian novels by E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster, P.D. James, and Cormac McCarthy.

Since 2013 Amir has been writing and publishing exclusively in English. In recent years his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, LRB, Harpers, Paris Review, and the New York Review of Books, etc. He was the recipient of The Axinn Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fellowship for 2016 - 2018 from NYU. His next novel, The Season of Wild Poppies, will be published in 2027 with Heny Holt.

Recommended books:

• Vargas Llosa, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
• Jane Harper, The Dry
• Jeff Lemire, The Underwater Welder

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.