How far would you go for forbidden love? This is the question that sets in motion Medusa of the Roses, a queer romantic noir set in modern-day Iran, where sex between men is a capital crime. The debut novel of Navid Sinaki – himself born in Tehran and now living in Los Angeles – is narrated by a young man called Anjir, and addressed directly to his childhood friend and secret lover, Zal. The action kicks off with the disappearance of Zal after a row between the couple. “Should I have just suggested a long weekend instead of a murder?” muses Anjir, in the first hint that something sinister is afoot.
Before turning his hand to fiction, Sinaki established a career as a visual artist, making work that explores queer identity alongside ancient mythology and outdated forms of digital and analogue media. These preoccupations are far from forgotten in Medusa of the Roses; in fact, the novel could be considered an extension of Sinaki’s artistic practice. Most notably, Anjir has inherited from his mother, Nilofar, an obsession with Greek and Persian myths – in particular the figure of the blind prophet Tiresias, “who turned into a woman simply by striking two snakes”. Anjir believes that he too can foretell the future, by reading tea leaves. Then he begins to wonder if he might also be capable of changing sex: if he becomes a woman, then he and Zal can have their happily ever after. It’s an oddity of the Iranian system that the government is willing to fund gender reassignment surgery despite draconian laws on sex outside heterosexual marriage.
Zal, meanwhile, is a fan of old Hollywood films, which he watches on glitchy contraband VHS tapes in badly dubbed Farsi. (In post-revolution Iran, the consumption of western culture is tightly controlled.) A plot to get Zal’s wife out of the way is inspired by The Postman Always Rings Twice – a metatextual flourish from Sinaki, who is clearly having a lot of fun writing his own take on the classic noir, replete with sex and violence and sociopaths. But Medusa of the Roses lacks a key ingredient for a thriller: suspense. The intensity of the novel’s opening salvo gradually dissipates as Anjir gets distracted by various tasks: searching for Zal, trying to get hold of estrogen, investigating whether Zal was cheating, and so on. Still, the novel’s final act delivers some good twists that you might not see coming.
The bigger problem is that it’s never made clear why Anjir is willing to go to such extremes to be with Zal. “We were each other’s first everything,” Anjir says at one point. “How cruel to find love on the first try.” We just have to take this as sufficient evidence that this is a love story for the ages. But there’s very little sense of what either character is like and why they are drawn to each other: no moments of interiority, nor any meaningful interactions other than a couple of sex scenes. The best thrillers place you right in the minds and hearts of their antiheroes (think of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley). You care what happens to them – even, or especially, when that identification has queasy implications.
Then again, maybe Sinaki isn’t aiming to write that kind of fiction. In one scene Anjir and Nilofar are discussing the Greek myth of Dido of Carthage’s self-immolation after she is abandoned by Aeneas – Anjir doesn’t understand why someone wouldn’t automatically try to escape a fire. “Mythology doesn’t exist for realism,” Nilofar says. “Some fires you don’t realise you’ve made.” Medusa of the Roses also contains a number of superficially baffling images and events that have a deeper allegorical resonance. Anjir’s decision to transition from man to woman is the most significant of these: it’s presented not as a case of gender dysphoria, but rather as a drastic strategy that will allow Anjir to hide the relationship with Zal in plain sight. The fantasies of myth are a channel through which to express the realities of living – and attempting to love – under a repressive regime.
• Medusa of the Roses by Navid Sinaki is published by Serpent’s Tail (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
