D oes a novel need a factchecker? Not for the kinds of truths that Amin, the scruffy protagonist of Hossein Asgari’s second novel, Desolation, holds dear. He accosts a young Iranian-Australian writer in an Adelaide cafe and announces that he has a story for him: “It’s a true story, not one of those made-up, pointless whatever it is that you people write.” The writer is sceptical – “I have no interest in a true story, if such a thing exists” – but he listens.

The writer is never named and Amin is not the stranger’s real name but, over a series of meetings in parks and cafes, Amin tells the writer his story. The bulk of the novel follows Amin’s life in post-revolutionary Iran, in the aftermath of the war with Iraq, and is narrated in the third person by a writer. But which one? Asgari is

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