Books
Oct 5-9, 1998 / Mehr 13-17, 1377
Book of the week
* Sadegh Hedayat: Blind Owl
Past picks
* Romance: Nizami's
Layla and Majnun
* History: Shah of Shahs
* Rural: Children
of Deh Koh
* Political poetry: Iraj
Mirza
* Novel: Persian Brides
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Blind Owl
By Sadegh Hedayat
Translated by D. P. Costello
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Nizami's Layla and Majnun
Translated by Colin Turner
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Xenophon's Imperial Fiction : On the Education of Cyrus
Translated by James Tatum
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Shah of Shahs
By Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage Books, 1992
A reader writes: CNN meets Sheherezade This is one of my favorite books
of all time. It gave me more information about Iran than everything I read
in newspapers or heard on the radio for all the years of the hostage crisis
and since. Despite being translated from the Polish, it reads like poetry
or myth, and manages to convey a gut level understanding of what it is
to be Iranian. Along the way it pulls up all kinds of other issues, and
illuminates them with great compassion and insight.What happens to the
ruler of a poor third world country when oil suddenly brings unimaginable
wealth? What is it like to live with the fear of the secret police permeating
every thought and action? What mysterious factor causes a fearful hopeless
population to finally revolt against its opressors?
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Children of Deh Koh : Young Life in an Iranian Village
By Erika Friedl
1997, Syracuse University Press
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The
Complete Poems of Iraj Mirza
From Iranbooks, Bethesda, Maryland.
See feature
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Persian Brides : A Novel
By Dorit Rabinyan, Yael Lotan
The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lowenthal: ...she writes
with the wise and leisurely assurance of a town bard recounting communal
myths. In this translation by Yael Lotan, Rabinyan's marvelously digressive
style and rich prose give the story the feel of a nightlong wedding feast.
Persian
Brides is an auspicious debut.
The New Yorker: The characters, comic, sodden, and sly, spill
out of this small book like clowns in a ragtag circus.
The San Francisco Chronicle, Sherri Hallgren: ...a dazzling and
assured first novel ... Persian
Brides at once demystifies and mesmerizes.
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