Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys across Iran

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The truths about Iran—quite different truths from versions put forward by Washington, Tehran, and the media. Afshin Molavi, a rising young writer born in Iran and fluent in Farsi, traveled his homeland for over a year. Along the way, he met with students of the right and left, bazaar merchants, Islamic clerics, pro-democracy writers, Islamic hard-liners, feminists, government officials, and kids hooked on anything western. All opened their hearts to the young Molavi, speaking candidly about issues that matter to them: unemployment, freedom, religion, poetry, history, love, marriage, the Internet, the ruling clerics, and green cards. Throughout his journey, Molavi weaves the tale of nearly 3,000 years of Iranian history through pilgrimages to important historical sites and monuments. Few books have penetrated the soul of Iran as deeply as this exceptional report on one of the world's most important nations. Persian Pilgrimages is a journey to remember.

Author Biography: Afshin Molavi holds a masters degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and has reported on Iran for Reuters and the Washington Post. He lives in Washington, DC.

SYNOPSIS

Born in Iran and currently a resident of Washington, D.C., Molavi received a master's degree from Johns Hopkins U. School of Advanced International Studies, and has reported on Iran for Reuters and the Washington Post. His account of a year-long travel through Iran in 1999 offers readers a glance into Iran's past, present, and possible future, with unique insights into the political climate of his native land. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Journalist Molavi begins the chronicle of his year-long journey through a land in perpetual turmoil by saying, "This is a book about Iran and Iranians." In the midst of America's war on terrorism and as America is faced with the very real possibility of a second war with Iraq, this is a timely read. Reflective and at times deeply personal, Molavi, who was born in Iran and now lives in Washington, D.C., poignantly reveals Iran and its history through the voices of the people he interviewed, including merchants, students, feminists, traditionalists, children and revolutionaries, as they speak on such subjects as poetry, campus politics, personal appearance, democracy, religion, war and the West. In addition to his descriptions of landmarks and monuments, Molavi makes comparisons to other writings on Iran. He takes readers much further beyond the scope of magazine and newspaper articles, leading them through his own discovery of his homeland. In the end, he leaves Iran a conflicted man, weighed down by his new knowledge of the people and himself. "Surely, it would not be the last time I visited Iran, but somehow, I felt melancholy.... Had I seen everything I needed to see? Had I talked to enough people? What was this sense of loss I felt?" Not only a portrait of a country and people, this is also a personal journey into a man's past and his future. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Molavi, born in Iran but raised and educated mainly in the West, makes a return trip to the country of his birth and visits the major cities, sites, and shrines, ranging from Persepolis to the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Using his status as a Persian speaker attuned to the distinctive codes of Iranian culture but still necessarily an outsider, he brings to life the sampling of Iranians he encountered, from taxi drivers to top officials. He also weaves in excellent short takes on Iranian history from pre-Islamic times to the present. By his account, a broad spectrum of Iranians is disaffected from the clerical regime, but Molavi does not speculate about whether the hard-liners or the reformers will prevail. Instead, more modestly but usefully, he provides a brilliant tableau of today's Iran.

Library Journal

Iranian American journalist Molavi spent approximately one year (1999-2000) living in Teheran and exploring the country that his family had left more than 20 years before. As he traveled the well-known cities (Isfahan, Tabriz, Khoramshahr) two decades after the revolution, he simultaneously explored the rich historical and cultural past of his roots. Molavi discovers two schisms in the popular consciousness, the first between the pre-Islamic Persian Empire dating from 500 B.C.E. and the current Islamic Iran, the second between a genuine devotion to Islam in the street and a concurrent wish for a green card or visa to a Western country. Cities with historical or cultural significance give him a springboard to discuss Persian poetry, the greatness of Persia, and more recent history and its effects. Unlike Elaine Sciolino's Persian Mirrors, which summarizes her experiences reporting from Iran for over 20 years and many visits, this account is total immersion. Both paint a warm and positive picture of a people and a place that have recently been portrayed in the news as the "axis of evil" and as always hostile to the West. Suitable for public libraries. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Whither Iran, asks Washington-based Iranian journalist Molavi in this tour of the country￯﾿ﾽs past and present.

Molavi, who has lived in the US since his youth, returned to Iran for a year of journeying through the provinces to gain a sense of what Iranians were feeling about the course of the Islamic Republic. What he hopes to reveal here, by considering Iran￯﾿ﾽs current state of affairs in light of the country￯﾿ﾽs past, is just how complex a place it is, not at all like the one imagined by Iran￯﾿ﾽs authority figures, the conservative clerics, "who constantly demand black and white." For Molavi, shades of gray are best exemplified by Iranian writers, from the chronicler of Kings, Ferdowsi, on through Hafez￯﾿ﾽs ambiguities (though his "seize the day" attitude toward living holds particular resonance for contemporary Iranians, be they devout or sensualist) to the satirists, parodists, and allegorists of today, many of whom are in prison. Same as it ever was, might say those who remember the like treatment such writers received under the late Shah Pahlavi. But ambiguities abound, sloshing over the "complex lines between private and public space in Iranian society," between the behavior that is expected from an autocratic clerical state and the desires of a population who have long been familiar with the greater world. Molavi does well in explaining the fluid nature of Iranian politics, the obscure opening and shutting of democratic opportunities, the rise of the reformist clergy, and the evolution of a youth who "are less idealistic than their parents￯﾿ﾽ generation," thirsty for choice and opportunity, grounded in the real￯﾿ﾽthough that real must perforce take its cues from a government under thecontrol of an entrenched, conservative, quixotic clergy.