What do you think?
Rate this book
Iran: A People Interrupted
A deeply informed political and cultural narrative of a country thrust into the international spotlight
Praised by leading academics in the field as 鈥渆xtraordinary,鈥� 鈥渁 brilliant analysis,鈥� 鈥渇resh, provocative and iconoclastic,鈥� A People Interrupted has distinguished itself as a major work that has single-handedly effected a revolution in the field of Iranian studies.
In this provocative and unprecedented book, Hamid Dabashi鈥攖he internationally renowned cultural critic and scholar of Iranian history and Islamic culture鈥攖races the story of Iran over the past two centuries with unparalleled analysis of the key events, cultural trends, and political developments leading up to the collapse of the reform movement and the emergence of the combative presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Written in the author鈥檚 characteristically lively and combative prose, Iran combines 鈥渄elightful vignettes鈥� (Publishers Weekly) from Dabashi鈥檚 Iranian childhood and sharp, insightful readings of its contemporary history. In an era of escalating tensions in the Middle East, his defiant moral voice and eloquent account of a national struggle for freedom and democracy against the overwhelming backdrop of U.S. military hegemony fills a crucial gap in our understanding of this country.
Praised by leading academics in the field as 鈥渆xtraordinary,鈥� 鈥渁 brilliant analysis,鈥� 鈥渇resh, provocative and iconoclastic,鈥� A People Interrupted has distinguished itself as a major work that has single-handedly effected a revolution in the field of Iranian studies.
In this provocative and unprecedented book, Hamid Dabashi鈥攖he internationally renowned cultural critic and scholar of Iranian history and Islamic culture鈥攖races the story of Iran over the past two centuries with unparalleled analysis of the key events, cultural trends, and political developments leading up to the collapse of the reform movement and the emergence of the combative presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Written in the author鈥檚 characteristically lively and combative prose, Iran combines 鈥渄elightful vignettes鈥� (Publishers Weekly) from Dabashi鈥檚 Iranian childhood and sharp, insightful readings of its contemporary history. In an era of escalating tensions in the Middle East, his defiant moral voice and eloquent account of a national struggle for freedom and democracy against the overwhelming backdrop of U.S. military hegemony fills a crucial gap in our understanding of this country.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
13 people are currently reading
541 people want to read
About the author
Hamid Dabashi
69听books190听followersBorn on 15 June 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber鈥檚 theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber鈥檚 theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
December 5, 2017
"But whereas at the edge of a normative nihilism post-modernity has dismantled moral and political agency, from the edges of a normalized alterity anticolonial modernity in fact engenders, justifies and theorizes it." That's an actual sentence from the book. You will notice that it is pointlessly convoluted, full of jargon, and entirely devoid of meaning. That's 80% of the book. The other 20% is interesting Iranian history of the past 200 years -- political movements, rulers, colonial incursions, and the arts. That hardly justifies plowing through this mess of incoherence, hostile ideology stated as fact, and infuriatingly turgid prose. Paragraph-long sentences, clauses nested within clauses within clauses, meaningless big words, and poor transliteration -- the crimes against good writing are cruel and plentiful. Why use the word "alterity" when "otherness" will suffice? And why, in a work about the essence of being Iranian, call the work of the great Molana Rumi by its Arabic transliteration ("Mathnawi") when no Iranian would call it anything but the Masnavi?
I almost never post negative reviews, but I feeI like I know less about Iran after having read this book, and that's just not right. Unless that's your goal, you're better off reading something else.
I almost never post negative reviews, but I feeI like I know less about Iran after having read this book, and that's just not right. Unless that's your goal, you're better off reading something else.
September 23, 2020
Deeply flaunted by the authors personal opinion. The writing style was blown up, full of fancy sounding words that could have been said a lot easier.
The Autor鈥檚 bashing of the West in general and especially the USA gets boring pretty fast and is often overly simplified. Maybe at the time of the publishing his opinion was controversial but I feel like it was nothing new for me. I get it, America did a lot of shitty things, but this book isn鈥檛 about American foreign policy.
Dabashi loves Edward Said and every chapter contains at least two quotes from him. If I wanted to read Said I would have read his book and not this one. Without all this lecturing and ranting this book would have been a bit better. But only a bit.
The parts I enjoyed the most (or disliked the least) where when Dabashi was talking about famous poets, a topic in which he obviously is very interested in, I鈥檓 thinking about checking out the ones that I didn鈥檛 know. These parts where also where his complicated, description art prose seemed to fit the best.
鈥淸Sohrab Sepehri] was too busy laying the poetic foundations of a world in which those who could read hin would never fear the loss of their dignity - for merely reading Sepehri was a gift of grace, his words the talismanic revelations of a world in the immediate gnostic vicinity of life.鈥�
Sounds nice right? But all of the sentences where at least this long, with even more complicated words. I felt like the author couldn鈥檛 decide whether this should be a objective, well sourced non-fiction book about Iran and its history or his personal opinion on everything, and he tried to mask his opinion by using too many fancy words. It would have been more fun to read a dry history book than this stuff.
I enjoyed reading about the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, about whom I learned in a lecture about Islam in modernity, but Dabashi manages to unnecessarily complicate even that message completely.
Anyway, there simply must be a better book to get to know Iranian history.
The Autor鈥檚 bashing of the West in general and especially the USA gets boring pretty fast and is often overly simplified. Maybe at the time of the publishing his opinion was controversial but I feel like it was nothing new for me. I get it, America did a lot of shitty things, but this book isn鈥檛 about American foreign policy.
Dabashi loves Edward Said and every chapter contains at least two quotes from him. If I wanted to read Said I would have read his book and not this one. Without all this lecturing and ranting this book would have been a bit better. But only a bit.
The parts I enjoyed the most (or disliked the least) where when Dabashi was talking about famous poets, a topic in which he obviously is very interested in, I鈥檓 thinking about checking out the ones that I didn鈥檛 know. These parts where also where his complicated, description art prose seemed to fit the best.
鈥淸Sohrab Sepehri] was too busy laying the poetic foundations of a world in which those who could read hin would never fear the loss of their dignity - for merely reading Sepehri was a gift of grace, his words the talismanic revelations of a world in the immediate gnostic vicinity of life.鈥�
Sounds nice right? But all of the sentences where at least this long, with even more complicated words. I felt like the author couldn鈥檛 decide whether this should be a objective, well sourced non-fiction book about Iran and its history or his personal opinion on everything, and he tried to mask his opinion by using too many fancy words. It would have been more fun to read a dry history book than this stuff.
I enjoyed reading about the intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush, about whom I learned in a lecture about Islam in modernity, but Dabashi manages to unnecessarily complicate even that message completely.
Anyway, there simply must be a better book to get to know Iranian history.
May 25, 2022
Fluff to useful content ratio just isn't worth it. Most of the book is either Dabashis narcissism or insecurities.
The author tries REALLY hard to sound like a refined author and poet. He clearly loves Persian poetry, but I don't think he made up his mind whether he was writing history or mediocre poetry. He uses unnecessarily complicated language throughout the book. He desperately missed the mark and even delegitimizes himself by claiming if we read his book we will know more about Iran than some experts because he has some secret knowledge they don't (he doesn鈥檛).
He also finds ways to make jabs at the USA/the West In ways that don't make sense contextually, which is crazy because when it comes to Iran the USA doesn't look too good. Its hard to make an Iranian case against the US prior to the 20th Century when relations between the two nations didn't even exist. He goes so far to try to knock the West when discussing events that predate contemporary western thought and poetry that influenced it.
Dabashi is petty and exhausting, not worth the read.
The author tries REALLY hard to sound like a refined author and poet. He clearly loves Persian poetry, but I don't think he made up his mind whether he was writing history or mediocre poetry. He uses unnecessarily complicated language throughout the book. He desperately missed the mark and even delegitimizes himself by claiming if we read his book we will know more about Iran than some experts because he has some secret knowledge they don't (he doesn鈥檛).
He also finds ways to make jabs at the USA/the West In ways that don't make sense contextually, which is crazy because when it comes to Iran the USA doesn't look too good. Its hard to make an Iranian case against the US prior to the 20th Century when relations between the two nations didn't even exist. He goes so far to try to knock the West when discussing events that predate contemporary western thought and poetry that influenced it.
Dabashi is petty and exhausting, not worth the read.
March 25, 2018
If Hamid Dabashi had not spent so much space in his hateful ranting about the west and specially the US, this book would have been a third smaller and better. I decided to read the book to learn about Iranian history but instead time after time what you get is the author's diatribes of American foreign policy. My only explanation for this is that this author is your typical leftists professor whose explanation to every problem in the world has to do with American 'imperialism" while portraying the locals and natives of each region as helpless victims. There is also a lot of literary history which I found puzzling since I never got the concrete connection between Iran's politics and it's literary traditions. While he does criticize the theocracy that governs Iran, it does not come close to the berating he gives the US.
Overall I wished I've had more history of Iran and less biased opinion. More politics and less literature.
Overall I wished I've had more history of Iran and less biased opinion. More politics and less literature.
September 15, 2023
Very rarely do I DNF a book but god this one was awful. Can you please get your head out of your own ego and write something that sounds like a sentence?
Read
July 27, 2008A history of Iran over the past 200 years, focusing on the Iranian struggle against colonialism. This guy focuses a lot on literature, poetry, cinema, and other art to tell the story of Iran. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time following a lot of what he was saying because I am not at all familiar with the history of Iran and the names and places were hard for me to keep straight. BUT, the book got more interesting towards the end. I'd love to hear what anyone who knows more about Iran than me and has read this book thought about it.
"Resisting the onslaught of the misbegotten U.S. empire, its military might and faltering hegemony alike, are tall and graceful lighthouses of the collective will of people around the globe insisting on their pride of place, the dignity of their communal gathering to oppose and end tyranny in terms conducive to a future that is rooted in their own unending and unfolding history." p. 216
"Resisting the onslaught of the misbegotten U.S. empire, its military might and faltering hegemony alike, are tall and graceful lighthouses of the collective will of people around the globe insisting on their pride of place, the dignity of their communal gathering to oppose and end tyranny in terms conducive to a future that is rooted in their own unending and unfolding history." p. 216
November 13, 2016
Dabashi's description of the Ayatollah is pithy and memorable, "an ascetic who fed on dates, yogurt and vengeance". He maintains his pithy statements, iconoclastic vigor and satiric power throughout, attacking everyone: Qajar and Pahlavi monarchs, the US, bureaucrats, the expatriate bourgeois and Islamists. The heroes of Iran, in Dabashi's take, are the creative artists-- novelists, poets, journalists and film makers-- who kept Iranian culture alive-- interestingly not all of these folks actually worked in Farsi.
June 7, 2019
Shelved a quarter of the way through this book. I was hoping for a historical background of the Iranian people to give me insight of how they live and interact with the world today. This was an irritating collection of opinions that seemed disconnected and sloppy. I鈥檓 all for offering a different point of view but this one failed to provide what I desired.
February 27, 2025
I will say, the combinations of genres here is a bit tonally jarring, combining history, (postcolonial) theory, and memoir, often jumping from one to the other suddenly - but in stenographing Dabashi's experience of Iran, I understand why all three are necessary. Nevertheless, I feel like Dabashi lacks a worked-out vision for how his analysis ciphers the relations between various elements of base and superstructure, meaning that he often flits between geopolitical history on the one hand and cultural history (poetry, literature, film - creators name-dropped in gratuitously redundant lists) on the other, with no notion of how these interact with or come to inform one another. He's also flying at a relatively high altitude, meaning that he's often making loose claims or analogies that might have some resonance but ultimately might be a bit too lazy to work. His main thesis is heavily influenced by Sa茂d, an attempt to counteract the internalized racism of viewing Iran as inferior to the West. But he often accomplishes this by insisting that Iran is an actor on the world stage, in communication with Western politics, theory, culture, and art. I understand why this move logically follows from his Sa茂dian presuppositions, attempting to deconstruct the nation-state as a self-enclosed entity neatly distinguishable from its Others, instead forwarding the idea of a "nation without borders," but I fear this simply recapitulates the internalized racism: the West becomes the metric against which Iran is measured, and it succeeds only because it can "pull itself up," so-to-speak, to its level through intercoursing with it. Nevertheless, Iran serves as a paradigmatic example of a pluralistic society, given its religious, ethnic, and ideological diversity. The history is relatively simple: after the rotation through the dynasties, punctuated by the invasions of the Islamic empire and Alexander the Great, the 19th century seeing Britain, France, and Russia vying over influence in the region, the former outmaneuvering the others, alongside efforts by liberal reforms, the early 20th century saw the advent of a Constitutional Revolution. Then comes the more well-known story of the rest of the 20th century: the rise of the Shah to power, briefly overturned by Mossadegh, who nationalized the oil industry, then overthrown by the CIA with the return of the Shah, eventually overturned by the Islamic Revolution. I think Dabashi has some relatively insightful analyses, such as his reading of the symbolism of the veil as a displaced class resentment, as well as his reading of Ahmadinejad's Shi'i mysticism as a sort of displaced Trotskyism, in connection with the teachings of Mull膩 峁dr膩. I think his claim of a dialectic between unity and division, Iran's postcolonial global position yet internal strife, is interesting in light of the comparisons and contrasts to the history of Turkish development, though his division of the ideological currents into nationalism, socialism, and Islamism might be a bit too simplistic. Regarding his interventions in more contemporary debates amongst personalities: I think Fukuyama and Huntington are way too easy of targets, and his treatment of Nafisi is a bit unflattering in just how clear of an axe he has to grind. Nevertheless, I appreciate his dispatching of Rushdie, and especially the fact that, although he doesn't agree with current Iranian policy, he refuses to accede to the figure of an international dissident, reminding the world that Iran is ultimately a democracy, and that the fact that the government doesn't represent its people despite being influenced by the shared will of the Iranian people is a contradiction internal to democracy itself.
January 22, 2020
Dabashi as professor at Iranian studies and comperative literature, is presenting a comprehensive view for the history of Iran for 200 years. The book provides better understanding about the current political and social circumstances of Iran. Modernizm versus traditionalism, (in other words West or East) is one of the major dilemmas of Middle Eastern countries which adapt modernism and industrialization late after European and American countries. Dabashi emphasizes an opposite perspective and suggests that what they encountered at Iran is colonial modernizm not only western modernizm. I highly recommend the book to ones who look for further understanding for changing dynamics of Iran, disputes between different political and socio-economic classes and influence of cultural events.
Read
June 24, 2022From Follett:
On nations without borders -- The dawn of colonial modernity -- A constitutional revolution -- The Pahlavis -- An Islamic revolution -- To reconstruct and reform -- The end of Islamic ideology. Traces the history of Iran over the last two centuries, focusing on the key events, cultural trends, and political developments that have shaped the country, its people, and its attitudes towards the United States.
On nations without borders -- The dawn of colonial modernity -- A constitutional revolution -- The Pahlavis -- An Islamic revolution -- To reconstruct and reform -- The end of Islamic ideology. Traces the history of Iran over the last two centuries, focusing on the key events, cultural trends, and political developments that have shaped the country, its people, and its attitudes towards the United States.
January 15, 2022
Loved it. Dabashi takes you deep into the soul of the Iranian nation.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 14, 2024
This book, playing on the intersection of sociology, literature, cultural studies, and most importantly history, was a brilliant exploration of the contemporary history of "Iran", and how colonial modernity as Dabashi calls it "interrupted" the course of domestic progress, which ended up to disastrous results like the Islamic revolution. Dabashi shows how the neocolonial orientalist project, has been, and still is, manipulating the narrative about Iran. The book is an eye-opener for anyone who wants to know more about this three-thousand-year-old nation from an unbiased viewpoint which criticises the socio-cultural flaws of the nation while condemning foreign intervention as well.
July 29, 2016
A book about the history of Iran, particularly, literary, cultural, political. Dabashi is greatly influenced by E. Said and the colonial studies school, and aptly uses those ideas to tell a fascinating story about Iran and its people, and draw meaningful conclusions from contemporary events concerning Iran.
While Dabashi's analyzes are most often very thought-provoking, the book has too much personal touches, and is not an "objective" book in history. There are plenty of places where the author gets emotional and based on obscure anecdotes derives general results; for instance when Dabashi maintains that before the constitutional revolution, there was (and nowadays if you travel in Iran rural areas, there is) no sense of "nation" among people. This claim is supported by recalling that once a fiend of Dabashi met a villager who didn't know where "Iran" is. Or, suddenly Dabashi dismisses the entire body of anthropological work as useless, based on what?! etc.
Apart from these emotional moments, the book is likable, and tries to explain to Iranians why they don't need to take pride in their pre-islamic Iran, but instead their contemporary movements are the very "modernism" everyone is talking about.
While Dabashi's analyzes are most often very thought-provoking, the book has too much personal touches, and is not an "objective" book in history. There are plenty of places where the author gets emotional and based on obscure anecdotes derives general results; for instance when Dabashi maintains that before the constitutional revolution, there was (and nowadays if you travel in Iran rural areas, there is) no sense of "nation" among people. This claim is supported by recalling that once a fiend of Dabashi met a villager who didn't know where "Iran" is. Or, suddenly Dabashi dismisses the entire body of anthropological work as useless, based on what?! etc.
Apart from these emotional moments, the book is likable, and tries to explain to Iranians why they don't need to take pride in their pre-islamic Iran, but instead their contemporary movements are the very "modernism" everyone is talking about.
July 19, 2009
Dabashi suffers for a number of distinctly Iranian diseases. All is sacred while nothing is sacred, all is serious while nothing is serious, and finally the problem of Iranian philosophy having been embedded in its poetry...where a single verse can speak volumes.
While Dabashi tackles some extremely thoughtful subjects beyond his discussion of history, the book loses some value as he delves into unnecessary and at times ad hominen attacks. There are so many new ideas introduced here and left half-baked.
This is a book ripe for revision and expansion. A year or two off concentrating on expanding the political-philosophical ideas contained here should result in a work paralleling or surpassing one of Dabashi's inspirations - Edward Said.
[My father both read and reviewed this book, not me!:]
While Dabashi tackles some extremely thoughtful subjects beyond his discussion of history, the book loses some value as he delves into unnecessary and at times ad hominen attacks. There are so many new ideas introduced here and left half-baked.
This is a book ripe for revision and expansion. A year or two off concentrating on expanding the political-philosophical ideas contained here should result in a work paralleling or surpassing one of Dabashi's inspirations - Edward Said.
[My father both read and reviewed this book, not me!:]
April 8, 2016
This book, Iran: A People Interrupted by Hamid Dabashi is quite unlike any historical record I have ever read. Dabashi refers to his book as the true accounts of what happened throughout the length of Iranian history. However, as well as providing extensive amounts of facts, the author thoroughly analyses the effects of events on the people of Iran. Personally, I took time to analyse and compare the section on the Revolution and its effects on people. Seeing Dabashi's uncensored view on things happening before, during, and after the revolution is refreshing and really resonates with thereader. He is not afraid to denounce the Western world for taking away democracy, or monopolising oil. I highly recommend this book to people who take an interest in history, because the facts, combined with the perspective, make for an extremely informative text.
March 29, 2007
If I didn't concur with Dabashi's basic argument, I would knock this book down a star. His gratuitous ad hominem attacks on right-wing demagogues who could far too easily be discredited without resorting to calling them "senile" and "thugs" detract from the seriousness of this book. More importantly, Dabashi spends a good quarter of this book discussing Kant, Spivak, and Said, simultaneously glossing over economic necessities. The intended readership of this trade published book will inevitably be put off by his constant "post/colonial" digressions. Finally, his overemphasis on "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is counterproductive. He already wrote on this at length in al-Ahram, and there is no need to keep kicking a dead horse. And kicking it. And kicking it.
January 11, 2013
This wasn't a page turner in the least bit. The book is highly academic. It uses just about every social science buzz word you can think of, sometimes in one long-winded sentence. Once you get past all the critical theory that shapes Dabashi's writing though, this book is well worth a read.
The book covers a range of topics related to Iranian history: literature, film, language, gender roles, and ethnic minorities. It does so while focusing on specific time periods and key events over the last 200 years. Most importantly, the book demolishes all the myths, both past and present, that Americans (and all the occidentalists as Dabashi might say) have been told about Iran.
After reading the book, I'm still just trying to figure out: What is Iran?
The book covers a range of topics related to Iranian history: literature, film, language, gender roles, and ethnic minorities. It does so while focusing on specific time periods and key events over the last 200 years. Most importantly, the book demolishes all the myths, both past and present, that Americans (and all the occidentalists as Dabashi might say) have been told about Iran.
After reading the book, I'm still just trying to figure out: What is Iran?
February 18, 2009
This is pretty good overall. Dabashi makes some very presceient observations about the idiotic ways in which people misunderstand their history, all while giving a fascinating (if truncated) run-down of the intellectual and social history of a nation that unfortunately has been reduced in our culture to a few sondbites from its rather controversial president. Dabashi's writing can feel overwrought and frantic at times. He also repeats himself quite a bit. I actually found myself wanting the book to be longer, as some of the events he touches upon are not really unpacked in their full scope. A fascinating, wide ranging book from a wide ranging intellect.
Read
July 31, 2008This is the sort of political nonfiction Americans should be reading more of. Grounded in a firm critical-theory base (Said, Fanon, Agamben, Adorno), it expounds upon a range of topics within the scope of Iranian history; literature, film, personal stories, and the role of ethnic minorities help to provide a line of connection to the history of a culture so systematically ignored or misrepresented by Americans. Perhaps most importantly, it pointed out a number of flaws in my own reasoning, showing me how opinions and attitudes are fundamentally orientalist. Good call, Hamid Dabashi.
Read
February 7, 2007Reading it now.
June 27, 2007
Amazing in scope but with a slightly tiresome and repetitive prose.
December 15, 2009
So far this book is poetic and revealing. So far so great!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.