When I bought the book I expected to read one of those annoying upper middle class tales of nagging about freedom (there lack of) and fundamentalism and the kind of self promotional bourgeois-autography for which the publishers seem to have a palate. But, this turned to be a surprise; a hilarious one.
A poor British backpacker, with a couple of thousand dollars of saving, quits his job and hitchhikes to Iran. This book is about his adventures.
Luckily for Jamie Maslin (and his readers), he is shielded from the upper-class Tehrani society (about whom we often read) for most of his trip (although he meets and spends enough time with them to give us a sense of what they are like, too). As such, his book is full of real Iranians, the other 50 million, who come in all shapes and shades and present him with the paradoxical complexity of the Iranian life and culture. Succinct, but his recounts are full of details, simply but lucidly written facts about all things he encounters.
This book took me home, to scents and scenes of Iran, and made me laugh, laugh really hard!
I won't spoil it for you. Treat yourself to 17 dollars of fun!
11 comments:
This is will be more a surprise and a hilarious one too. cardboard backpacker In Tehran
Cardboard Ayatollah
Just the title made me laugh. Your link to amazon brought up books that others bought and one of them was "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ" which I have read and enjoyed. Have you read it?
I take it you are not in Iran. I would avoid Isfahon if not so. I hate to see those wonderful mosques destroyed by the vibration of bombs -- other wonders ruined by the nonsense of power.
It was funny seeing the old Viet Nam era American F4H phantoms being flown by Iranian air force! Some Russian Migs would be a step up, but still not enough I fear.
Point is, the world cannot allow the Ayatollas to possess nuclear weapons. Somehow religion will stop at nothing.
A good arguement for the separation of church and state do you not agree?
Hey Nunya,
It's a really funny book you will enjoy it. I have ot read the book you mentioned but have bought it and will get to it in a couple of months.
goatman I don't object to the separation of religion from state affairs, but I object to your suggestion that the Iranian religious leaders must be stopped at any cost, and the cost being the CRIMINAL GENOCIDAL ISRAEL AND AMERICA BOMBING IRAN!
What would they do with a nuclear weapon, in your opinion?
Goatman,
What is Israel doing with a nuclear bomb?
What is Pakistan doing with it? What is North Korea doing with it? Israel and the United States of America have a longer track record of aggression and abuse of nuclear material in war than any other country.
Iran IS ENTITLED to nuclear technology; and unless it has a weaponizing know-how the rest of the world would not REALIZe that they have to sit and negotiate with Iran like a state and not like a COW that needs carrots and sticks.
it is UTTER NONESENSE to think that if Iran has nuclear weapons, then crazy Mullahs will use it.,
You also seem IGNORANT ABOUT THE FACT: that the Iranian "mullahs" have a FATWA AGAINST weapons of mass destruction. It is indeed AGAINST the religious decree to develop and use nuclear bombs!
(I really am mad at you, I thought you are well-informed :)) )
I am not for any country having them (and I am surely against my country having used them to destroy 250,000 people in Japan with them -- I don't think killing civilians is ever justified, but then look at Trade Tower nonsense) but we must deal with reality and try to control the madness.
I don't see any country as a threat to Iran without Iran being a threat to them. Real, demonstrable, not just perceived.
Please don't be mad. Cannot we discuss this reasonably without emotion?
I would not even trust our "clerics", i.e. evangelicals, with the bomb.
Why would I trust yours?
Goatman, the problem with your logic is that you think it is RELIGION that is running Iran. That is not the case. Religion is a mask for economic interests of a few, they know it and the people know it and at no time has the religion been SO WEAK in Iran ... what necessitated it for Iran to have nuclear technology is "membership" to the club of Asian governments who can no longer be bullied by the West.
You need to understand that NO COUNTRY can be under as much geopolitical threat as Iran is, without spending a good bit of it fortune on military. Israel and Iran are similar in that case, both surrounded with 'enemies', except that Israel gets handouts from the US taxpayers, and Iran does not!
is it so hard to grasp??
Generalities are never hard to grasp; that is why they are used for political ads and propaganda. But I am not seeing any facts here and I am now looking at a photo in the Times (NY) of Karzai, Zardari, and your Ahmadinejad at a meeting in Islamabad last week. Although your guy looked a little stiff in the photo, he did manage to say "The nuclear bomb will not bring superiority to any nation" -- clearly a historical falsehood. Where is fact for your assertion that Iran is "surrounded by enemies". Certainly Iraq is no longer a threat? Arabia has made no advances that I know of. Iran makes its own enemies.
Seems to me that with the oil money your country has at its hands that it could afford to build a progressive and peaceful society worthy of it's Persian history.
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