But it is as the tortured nation at the heart of international conflict that Iran really fascinates us. Nobel Peace prize-winner Shirin Ebadi’s memoirs skilfully weave her personal history with the cataclysmic events that have shaped her country. Since the world today is obsessed with understanding Islamic societies, this book won’t go unnoticed. Ebadi’s account is more political than the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran. But unlike its writer Azar Nafisi who left Iran, Ebadi has braved unemployment and jail to stay on and argue forcefully against immigration.
There are many insights here into the country that emerged from the 1979 Islamic revolution. When the Khomeini revolution took place, Ebadi backed it only to find it devouring its own. She describes the cult of martyrdom and suicide bombings that emerged from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.
Ebadi’s book ends with her winning the 2003 peace prize. There’s nothing on current President Ahmadinejad, who is engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the US. Ebadi traces Iran’s anti-Americanism to the 1951 US-backed coup that removed premier Mossadegh, "the father of Iranian independence", but doesn’t give us a deeper understanding. Mossadegh had angered the West by nationalising Iran’s oil industry. Ebadi just reminds us how the US has played oil politics for half a century.
