Covering a range of decades but set against the political backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Dalia Sofer's latest novel, Man of My Time, is a quietly powerful retrospective look at the accumulation of moments and choices that form a life. Hamid, a middle-aged ex-interrogator for the Iranian regime, visits New York City on a diplomatic mission in the present day. While there, he meets with his estranged brother and receives a box of their deceased father's ashes, which he agrees to take back to Iran so as to fulfill their father's dying wish to be buried in his homeland.

When I began reading, I thought the novel would focus much more on Hamid's task of repatriating his father's ashes. Although the ashes are key, in that they cause Hamid to reflect on his life, his father's remains play less of a starring role in the rest of the story. Instead, it is the oppressive memory of his ...