ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The real Iran will intrigue us for decades, but this novel is about an imaginary country. It is a work of fiction, and none of the characters, companies, or institutions described in this book are real. People who look for real intelligence operations in this invented story will only deceive themselves.
In sketching this imaginary Iran, I received help from a number of people and sources. Azar Nafisi of Johns Hopkins University kindly discussed Iranian literature and gave me fine new translations of the classic Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi and My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad. My friend Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace read the manuscript and gave me many good suggestions. Dr. John R. Harvey, a physicist with the National Nuclear Security Administration, helped guide me through the unclassified open literature on neutron generators and other aspects of weapons technology. Other friends and sources who will go unnamed here shared insights about the puzzle of Iran.
In sketching my fictional portrait of Iran, I recalled the sights and sounds of my own two-week visit there for the Washington Post in 2006. I also drew on several excellent books: Christopher de Ballaigue’s In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs offered a brilliant personality sketch of the regime. Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad was a source for some contemporary Iranian slang and Persian poetry, as well as a woman’s view of the Islamic Republic. The Lonely Planet guidebook to Iran was a great source of local lore. And I would have been lost without my Ketab-e Avval “Tehran Directory.”
I offer special thanks once again to Garrett Epps, my closest friend since we met as freshmen in college, who was the first reader of this, as of all my previous books. His friendship bolsters me every day. My friend Jonathan Schiller again offered me a novelist’s hideaway at his law firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner. This book is dedicated to him and Dr. Richard Waldhorn, two dear family friends.
I am grateful to others who read and commented on early drafts: my wife, Dr. Eve Ignatius; my literary agents, Raphael Saga lyn and Bridget Wagner; my agent at Creative Artists Agency, the incomparable Robert Bookman. I am lucky indeed to be back at W. W. Norton, and I thank Starling Lawrence for his fine editing, as well as Jeannie Luciano, Rachel Salzman, and many other friends at Norton.
Finally, for the tolerance that allowed me to continue with my day job as a columnist while I worked on this novel, I thank Fred Hiatt, the editorial editor of the Washington Post; Alan Shearer, who runs the Washington Post Writers’ Group; and most especially my boss and friend, Donald Graham.
THE INCREMENT Page 36