Well, if you enjoy a good riddle, this book is perfect ! When reading, you keep wondering who told you a couple of sentences you've just read ... And, all the events, locations, people, ring a bell in your memory ... It is so easy to read, to understand, to feel the main character is your friend, or the friend you had a couple of years ago !
As the story unfold, you are looking for the plot, where is the thread ? You thought it was like a biography, about someone born in Teheran before the end of a 2500 years old monarchy ( you'll lean so much about Iran).
Then, you are in Paris, and without knowing how, back to the USA !
But where is the travel ? Inside your mind or through the story ? Or both ? You'll know if you read the book to the end !

This book could be important. The potential is there, but what gets in the way is the textbook like narration that's a bit pedantic and unemotional. Kind of like WIll Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, the story within a story is an excellent vehicle, but it is made clumsy with an enviable SAT vocabulary and a rehashing of history along a bumpy, twisting timeline as the Persian empire crumbles and members of the royal family and their inner sanctum establish lavish lives outside of Tehran. Identity is a major component and the clash of culture versus self and the choices a person makes to establish their own place in life is a major factor. Reaction to adversity, the kind that could alter our path, is a ground-shaking force and its reverberation is what makes the time jumping an excellent component of this story. But what the reader needs to feel the impact, but the blunt force never makes more than a scratch.

The Riddle of the Sphinx takes a Sliding Doors approach to telling the story of Keyvan, also known as Eric, an Iranian lawyer who now lives in New York. The book shifts from the present to Keyvan's early childhood in Iran during the 1970's. Many people may find this to be the most interesting part of the book because it delves into a subject we don't often find in American novels: the Iranian Revolution and how it impacted different classes of Iranian society.

The next section of the book explores the protagonist's college years at Princeton. Eric has a gay relationship with another student named Mark. Without getting too specific, the relationship is set up to fail. This should come to no surprise to the reader since it's clearly established early in the novel that Keyvan/Eric is married to a woman during the present time.

The last section of the book explores Eric's married life in New York. Again, without getting too specific, the book takes a Buddhist approach in its denouement. Because of this, the ending wasn't quite what I expected it to be. I'm not sure I agree with some of the choices Eric made, but I do admire the author for taking a different approach than what I had anticipated. Sometimes it's hard for writers to strike the right balance between artistry and preachiness, but I felt Montagu handled this fairly well.

A book based on alternate realities, a sort of "what if", Sliding doors scenario. Keyvan is growing up in an upper class, waelthy Iranina family in Tehran when the Shah is deposed. His mother and granny try to escape the country for Paris and the Us by plane but his mother is stopped at the airport. In one scenario the family return to their home and try to escape over the mountains with people traffickers but thwarted his mother is imprisoned and Keyvan returns ot his private school with dire consequences. In another scenario, Keyvan leaves the country with his grandma and his mother stays behind and tries to unite with them at a later date. Keyvan goes to Priceton and has a comlicated love affair with an all American jock that is doomed. In the final scenario the family all leave Iran and Keyvan grows up to overcome his university love affair and marries and has a child . He becomes a top lawyer but feels unfulfilled until he has a dream that has flashes of the other alternate realities and he vows to become a more engaged and empathetic human being.

I found the first scenario, where Keyvan is trapped in Tehran to be the most thrilling and well written part of the book. I felt the alternate reality jumps were a bit jarring, some characters stories lead nowhere. The inal section with Keyvan's dream and "spiritual" rebirth read like it was part of another book and din't for me blend well with what had preceeded it. I also thought his gay love affair was a ho hum, see it coming tale "by numbers".

This book was a real mixed bag for me, great stuff in Tehran but weaker storytelling in the West.

I like how different this book is from others that I've read. My favorite part was the first third as I liked having a view into what happened in Iran. I also liked how the three main parts of the story were tied together so neatly at the end even though I wasn't sure how it could. I appreciate having the chance to read this book

The riddle of the sphinx is one of the very few books that I couldn't put aside. A dramatic epic beginning in the 1970s in Iran to the western world of London, Paris and New York during a man's life. Where he explores his sexual orientation, love and life.

I would have loved to continue with the book even after the story ended. It's a must read I highly recommend buying.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book