What a pity. It started so well, so funny and meaningful. And throughout, there were really deep and wonderful sentences. But there was just so much going, the main character, flashbacks to different characters, the Iran war, the downing of Flight 655, imagined dialogues between characters and famous people, excerpts from an imagined book etc. etc. It's a credit to how good of a writer Akbar is that it stays coherent. But to the end the story gets even more soap-opera and it just is not great.