As a soulless Imperialist swine who believes in Capitalism and the rights of young women to wear t-shirts and jeans in public, I found Reading Lolita in Tehran an intriguing book. It tells the surprising story of Intellectuals living in Iran in the years after The Revolution. Odd, my only thoughts on the people who stayed in Iran after Ayatollah Khomeini took over was that they were all fundamentalist nutcases with no brains at all. At the very onset Azar Nafisi says that she changed names and combined characters in order to protect the people she talks about in her…
Tag: imperialist
The Woman Who Fell From The Sky
“Boy, those French: They have a different word for everything!” ~Steve Martin The Woman Who Fell From The Sky is the story of an amoral American home wrecker who moves to Yemen for a year to be the Editor of an English language newspaper. Ok, the homewrecking bit comes late in the story, but it cast it’s shadow over the entire book for me. Jennifer Steil encounters reporters who don’t read or write very good English, a culture where women are treated as third or fourth class citizens, and the fondness of everyone in Yemen for Qat-the mood altering drug…
Snow by Orhan Pamuk-Book Review
Over the course of a few snowy days in a little town in Turkey we watch as a Poet regains his gift, a Coup overthrows the local Government, and Radicals of all sorts talk about how much they hate The West. Snow is a view into a world that is both changing and standing perfectly still. A place where poverty and torture are normal everyday events. A place where young girls who are forbidden from wearing their headscarves have been committing suicide. Not surprisingly, Orhan Pamuk’s cast of characters have names unlike any I am familiar with. There is a…