The Persian by David McCloskey “Whatever the Mullahs say, Paradise is a fluid concept.”

How prescient it is that The Persian would arrive on my doorstep the very week that Israel bombed Iran. I watched the news in disbelief and then opened this novel to find it all the more believable.

We are reading the story of Kam Esfahani’s tortured experience, documented in prison with the blue crayons and stacks of paper the General has provided. He knows not where he is. But, he does know that crayons are less likely to be used as a weapon, even though he contemplates thrusting one through his own eye into his brain. He does know that he must not speak until he is spoken to, and that the General has not been satisfied with the drafts of the story that Kam has produced the past three years of his imprisonment. He chooses the sharpest crayon with care and begins yet again.

Kam is a dentist, living in Sweden. But, he is not Swiss. He is a Persian Jew, recruited by Arik Glitzman to work for the Mossad. Glitzman is Chief of the Mossad’s Caesarea Division, responsible for target killings, cyberattacks, and sabotage in Iran. Why would Kam agree to a proposition involving the capture of Colonel Jaffar Ghorbani? Because he longs to escape Sweden. He longs for a home in California, which he will be able to obtain with the money he earns as a spy.

Is it worth the danger? 

That is a decision each man must make for himself. What are we willing to die for?  Courage? Culture? Love? Our own integrity? Maybe Kam also longs to prove that he is something more daring than a dentist could ever be. Maybe the ties between being a spy and being emotionally involved with Roya, a Persian widow and her daughter, are irrevocably intertwined. 

I know that I read long into the night, unconscious of turning each page, as McCloskey’s writing is exquisite. You can keep John le Carre, and maybe even Mick Herron.  I deem McCloskey the better writer, for the way he is able to build the tension emotionally and physically. For the picture he portrays of a man brave beyond measure, and two countries which may never find peace.

(Thank you to W. W. Norton for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of The Persian, which will be published on September 30, 2025.)