Summary

The story follows Sarah Middleton, a 35-year-old American woman, who has traveled to Tehran to visit Parvin, her best friend from college. The friends shared a close relationship but later drifted apart. Parvin became politically active, running a radio program advocating for women’s rights in Iran, where she was born. Sarah in turn felt she had failed to understand Parvin in terms of her national identity. While Parvin became increasingly impassioned, Sarah felt increasingly isolated and viewed Parvin’s growing activism as insincere, and “staged parody” (192).

Sarah had recently come out of a long-term relationship with Paul, who she met while working as a lawyer. Though it ended amicably, the narrator shows Sarah has been unable to move on or make sense of her life post-breakup and believed herself a “hollow person, who clung to hollow things” (182).

The story takes place within...