Salar Abdoh

[citation needed] Abdoh's first novel, The Poet Game, focuses on a young agent sent by a top-secret Iranian government agency to infiltrate a group of Islamic extremists in New York in order to keep them from acts of terror that might draw the US into a war in the Middle East.

[1] Though the book was published in 2000, it received far greater attention following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

[2] His second novel, Opium (2004) tells the story of a young American who used to work as a drug-runner along the Afghan/Iran border during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Years later, living in New York and trying to keep a low profile, his past suddenly catches up with him as the US is gearing up to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Abdoh's third novel, Tehran At Twilight, a literary thriller reminiscent of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, depicts the limits of friendship, and betrayal, in a time of war and after.