Nahal Tajadod was born in Teheran in 1960 and left Iran for France in 1977. She studied at INALCO where she obtained a doctorate in Chinese. Her thesis was on Mani, the Buddha of light and gave for the first time a translation of a Manichean text in Chinese, a real textbook written by the Manicheans themselves. She has been researching the Iranian contributions to Chinese civilisation. Buddhism, Christianism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Islam were all spread in China by Iranian missionaries. Born into a family of Iranian erudites, Nahal Tajadod was initiated into Sufism in childhood. She has contributed to the translation of the R没mi and has written a fictionalized biography of the great master of Sufism. She is the wife of famous screenwriter and film critic Jean Claude Carri猫re.
Bear in mind the book is written from the point-of-view of an upscale Iranian woman, who lives in France, staying in the country temporarily each year. By the end I found myself agreeing with the reviewers who described the "plot" as " ... then I did this, then I did that ..." without much of a real point. By the end, when she finally does manage to get her passport renewed (said quest the reason for her visit to the country), I found myself beyond caring. She mentions partway through that she has a valid French one, yet never, ever gives a direct reason for needing an Iranian one at all; I was left inferring it had something to do with property rights, as her dual-national status seemed quite a hush-hush deal.
Her allusions to her parents, and her struggle to regain their property seized after the Revolution, sound as though they'd make for a fascinating story ... unlike this "meh" offering. Three stars as I'm perhaps being a bit curmudgeonly, and there's nothing really wrong here.
easy going read about the author renewing her Iranian passport and gives us her insight into Iranian society with some added wit but felt was nothing special but still a delightful read which was collected from the library just on a whim
WoW!, I admit that i immensely enjoyed this book!. Nahal Tajadod has told her story day by day for the sake of getting her Iranian passport renewed! apparently from her way of dealing with different personalities she meets, i can tell how kind and helpful she is to everyone who asks her a favor. Nahal gave us a bunch of iranian words and traditions, some were surprising and others were in Arabic so i already knew them. What i really liked about her is that she always find similarities between everyone she meets and a celebrity, and decides to call them by the celebrity name she finds similarities with! i find this book tremendously exciting, full of adventures, depression, and full of French coffee tins Nahal has. what i find interesting about the book cover is that it's illustrated by almost all people and events that she encountered through her one week and a half staying in Tehran!
Irritating book. Plays up to all kinds of stereotypes and shows the author's own silliness in a myriad different ways - she should have looked at it all in retrospect and reread the book before publishing it.
I didn't know that the book was originally written in French. the translation into arabic was quite bad. I should have read it in French , may be it would have gotten a better rating
I don't know what got me to finish this book. i mean, i didn't really like it, and most importantly i did not - at all - like how she blamed everything on Islam! we all know that Iran, among other Islamic countries, is corrupted, and the religion is not to be blamed. i think i just wanted to know how will she finally get her passport after all she's been through. and as expected, she got it just by the same way used in our Islamic countries; in a non true Islamic way. we are to be blamed. not our religion
Too bad the writing isn't that great, because the story is fine. Features some interesting anecdotes and tidbits about daily life in Iran. But the narrative isn't that far off from sound ing like: 'and then this happened, and then this happened...and then THIS happened,' that I felt a bit ripped off because it seemed like I was reading an unfinished work. In its current form, the book is more like an outline that needs to be cut in parts and fleshed out a lot in others. Oh well.
This one was not what I expected when I chose it to read. I was looking for a book with observations, information and stories about everyday life in Iran. While it had some of those elements in it I felt like I was reading a work of fiction.