Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran

by Jason Elliot

Overview

Filling a long-neglected gap in the travel writing of the region, Jason Elliot's Mirrors of the Unseen is a rare and timely portrait of the nation descended from the world's earliest superpower: Iran. Animated by the same spirit of exploration as its acclaimed predecessor, An Unexpected Light, and drawing on several years of independent travel and research, this thought-provoking work weaves together observations of life in contemporary Iran with history, politics, and a penetrating enquiry into the secrets of Islamic art. Generously illustrated with the author's own sketches and photographs, Mirrors of the Unseen is a rich, sensitive, and vivid account of a country and its culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312427337
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	10/02/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.99(d)

About the Author

Jason Elliot is the author of An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, which was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

A penetrating account of a series of journeys to Iran. . . . Jason Elliot is a travel writer of the old school: untethered to an itinerary, eager to be led astray, and as ardent an observer of the experience of traveling as of his destination.” —The New Yorker

“An important look at the forces at play in a region starting to dominate the Middle East.” —The Star-Ledger (Newark)

“Armchair travelers will enjoy moving with Elliot through both fabled cities and remote corners of Iran.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“A work of profound thought, imagination, passion, and ambition. It should be widely read.” —The Guardian (U.K.)

“Whatever stereotypes we may have crumble in the wake of Elliot's encounters with ordinary Iranians. . . . Mirrors of the Unseen takes us into a very different Iran, and the journey is fabulous. . . . Elliot writes like an angel.” —The Providence Journal

From the Publisher

Every decade or so, Iran pops onto our front pages, but for many of us, this faraway country remains as mysterious as ever. Jason Elliot, the author of The Unexpected Light, has spent four years living and traveling in Iran, visiting towns and villages where Western visitors are seldom seen. Mirrors of the Unseen illuminates the complexities and contradictions of this emergent yet insular society. His interviews with Iranians are interspersed with telling reflects on Iranian history, culture, and social norms.

Does Iran belong on the list of rogue nations? Absolutely not, British journalist Elliot urges in this virtuoso work. True, its government is wacky. But Iran, despite mullahs and religious police, is not monolithic, as the author discovers early on in his four-year journey across the vast nation; says one weary beauty he meets (one of many), "Here in Iran we lead a double life. . . . Understand that, and you will understand everything." Yet younger Iranians born long after the Khomeini revolution seem less and less inclined to toe the line, and even older ones with long memories of repression now seem intent on securing azadi-freedom. Elliot (An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, 2000) cannot help but address politics, for political matters are on everyone's lips. But his real interests lie in the culture, in the sense of both everyday life and the finer matters of history and the arts. One of his explorations takes him into traditional art, which he puzzles out at different turns ("it is difficult to suppose that an art as prolific and expert as that of the Islamic world was driven by no more than a desire to impress the eye alone"), eventually linking it to the mysteries of mathematics, at which the Persians once excelled. Though fascinated by the past, the author has a knack for meeting characters, often eccentric, who tell just the right stories: an American expatriate quietly breeding miniature horses thought extinct; a brilliant conversationalist recalling the day an Iraqi missile crashed through the roof of her Tehran kitchen; assorted taxi drivers, hoteliers and intellectuals revealing essential aspects of the national character. What the reader learns of Iran is mostlypositive, but by no means sugar-coated; some of the adventures presented here are for the stout-hearted only. A tempering treatise, one hopes, for those rushing to make war on Iran-and an education for those trying to stop them.

Kirkus Reviews