Slot

Karim first sees her in her husband's paperwork. Before long, she is in his bed.

In his small copy shop, Karim handles the neighborhood's documents and goes home alone. Then an aging watchman brings him a stack of papers about a fortune lost to a worthless mine and introduces him to Goli.

Married, grieving, and hungry for affection, Goli draws Karim into a life far more intimate than anything he has known. He wants to believe he understands her. He especially wants to believe she needs him.

Then there is Nasrin.

As Karim moves between the two women, he discovers that everyone has a different account of what happened, who suffered, and who deserves to pay. Around him, a circle of seemingly respectable women trades prayers, confidences, and schemes. Behind closed doors, tenderness carries its own demands. Private pleasures leave evidence.

And Karim, so eager to recognize everyone else's deception, has explanations for everything he does.

Darkly funny, se*ually frank, and deeply unsettling, Slot is a transgressive novel of obsession, grief, and the uses people find for one another. Through the restless voice of a man caught between his appetites and his excuses, it draws the reader into a neighborhood where reputation is precious, intimacy is negotiable, and desire gives people something to hold over each other.

Karim wants to tell you what these women did to him. Listen closely to what he did, too.