Being Iranian myself, I usually steer clear of books about Iran written by media personalities and the like, but Ms. Sciolino's take on Iran was a breathe of fresh air. Most writers focus on the government and take the people and their chants of "Death to America" at face value. Ms. Sciolino chose to dig deeper and really see what Iranian society is made up of (the past and present)....and her openness and desire to find the real Iran in the myriad of elusive mirrors really shines through in her writing. This was an excellent foray into trying to understand my complicated country. Bravo, Elaine.

While reading this, at some times when I saw what the people there endured and even liked, I got reminded of something from Pratchett ("Interesting times"):

"You know their big dish down on the coast?”
“No.”
“Pig’s ear soup. Now, what’s that tell you about a place, eh?”
Rincewind shrugged. “Very provident people?”
“Some other bugger pinches the pig.”

Maybe there's a chance for this people.

The book itself is great, and has a lot more depth than what's expected from journalists.

An excellent, insightful and well-rounded portrait of Iran in the last two decades of the 20th century. The author's deep familiarity with the country and its people, gained over the course of twenty years, shines through in every chapter.

Covering Iran for New York Times since 1979, Sciolino is full of stories and rich in Iranian friends. She is sometimes enchanted, other times horrified, but generally just fascinated by all the action. She finds Iran a deeply divided, rapidly changing country. In public debate or private conversation with women, she finds strong people who are trying to re-negotiate everything. Here's my favorite tidbit:

"Even the most minor changes in law are difficult to attain. For several days in 1996, I watched a rancorous debate in Parliament about whether the wife's mehriyeh [or bride wealth, which a wife brings to her new family but can reclaim in case of divorce] should be adjusted for inflation. Those deputies who opposed the move argued that it would set an inflationary precedent for all debts and thus create widespread economic instability. At one point, Abbas Abbassi, a conservative male member of Parliament, said: 'A woman who gets married at a young age is highly valuable to her husband. And as she becomes older, her value depreciates. So it is not right to adjust upward for inflation because she is worth less.' ... The female members of Parliament were outraged. 'He believes that women are created to be used by men, that they are just second-hand goods that should be at men's service,' Soheyla Jelowdarzadeh, who is also an engineer, shot back. 'This is against the Koran!' Eventually the female deputies prevailed and the measure passed by a comfortable majority. They considered it a major victory." (p. 126)

This was a long haul. I'm glad I picked it up this last month, given all that going on in Iran right now. I really feel like I have a better understanding of the country (which isn't saying much, since I had almost no understanding of it before). Elaine Sciolino has used her experience of more than twenty years as a correspondent in Iran to write a book about the modern face of the nation. It's extremely detailed, covers a wide variety of subjects, and stays interesting all the way through. I would say it was even a bit TOO long, since it did seem to drag along in the sections about the economy.

Sciolino has obviously had a very interesting career, and has met a wide range of very interesting people. There's a tendency to name-drop that gets a little annoying at times, but mostly I really appreciate the chance to see Iran from so many different angles. I would like to see her take on what's been going on with the recent Iranian presidential election, as I'm sure she's got something very insightful to say. Overall, this book is a useful introduction to a country about which most Americans (myself recently included) know very little.

A friend traveled to Iran to give a philosophy paper and recommended this book. Sciolino is a journalist whose curiosity and acute observations make this a fascinating book and a nice introduction to Persian society, especially the society of women.

I thought this was fantastic! So informative and easy to read. Fascinating stuff.

I am glad to be done with Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran and will put it on the 3 Star shelf. Stories of the Middle East are often sad and depressing. I hoped it would be different here, with the magnificent history of Persia lending an exotic flavor to this travel and adventure tale. Unfortunately, that is not the case:

The sadness of young people shows up in other ways. A young Iranian-American friend of mine who grew up in the United States but returned to Iran for a visit prided himself on his ability to blend in with people his age who had grown up in the country. But one day in a barbershop, the barber stated, “You recently came from abroad.”
“How could you tell?” the young man asked.
“You have laughter in your eyes,“ the barber said. “No one at your age who has known nothing else but life in Iran has laughter in his eyes.”

There was entirely too much focus on the political maneuvering of the 90’s, when the book was first published. I was tempted to put the book down several times yet would find reasons to continue, like the story of Hamid, an Iran-Iraq war veteran that was reminiscent of the Vietnam era, a forgotten soldier, living at the margins, railing at society and politicians for not honoring the war veterans and casualties.

I wanted to hear more about the Iran-Iraq war but also about the Iranian people and their life. This NYT reporter was on the plane with Khomeini when he went back to Iran. She has traveled many times to the country and has some good insight and anecdotes. I think women might like this book more than I did, because she does focus some large portions on the progress and regression of women in the Islamic Republic. The stories are alternatively uplifting and hopeful and then depressing.

In Qom, shortly after the revolution, I saw a scene that chilled me: three women in black chadors, their faces hidden behind gauzy black cloth. They could see out, imperfectly, I guessed, but outsiders couldn’t see in. “Death out for a walk,” was the way the nineteenth century French writer Guy de Maupassant once described women in chadors. He could have been in Qom that day with me.

The young people are a major force to be reckoned with, after the baby boom following the revolution. The mullahs wanted population growth and they got it. This resulted in a large group of young people who were becoming disillusioned in the late 90’s as they couldn’t get jobs. I think there remains opportunity to connect with the younger generation that has no love for the religious clerics who rule or fond memory of the revolution. There is a irreverence that comes through in the book that is catchy:

…a close friend who is a political scientist at the University of Tehran said only half jokingly that he was going to send me a video of himself.
“A video?”
“I thought I’d do a video of myself saying that if I confess I have cheated on my wife and committed treason, don’t believe it.” He said. “It’s forced. I thought I’d send it to a few of my friends.”
Then he had a better idea. “Maybe I’ll make two—one for my friends and one for my jailers. The one for my jailers will confess to everything. That way, they won’t have to bother torturing me first. They can just put the confession on television and set me free!”

With the ongoing tension recently between the West and Iran, I wanted to get a feeling for the Iranian side. With the outdated political discussions here, even with the 2005 afterword addition, I didn’t get enough of what I wanted. Interesting comment on the Iranian vs American view.

Americans, it is often said, have too little sense of history and the people of the Middle East too much. Where people in the Middle East carry around every past misfortune as a burden to be redeemed or avenged, Americans are constantly shucking off the past in favor of the present.

I'd agree with that. This is a good but dated look at Iran that is not hard to read.

Co za wspaniałe dzieło. Bardzo wnikliwe i ciekawe. Szkoda, że u nas brakuje tak szerokiego kontekstu w mediach, jeżeli w ogóle cokolwiek o Iranie się pojawia. Warsztat dziennikarski i słownictwo, że szczęka opada. Sprawdziłem na mailu, książkę kupiłem w 2011 roku:) Musiała dojrzeć.

What an incredible, if very limited, insight into a culture. While it is written by an outsider, it is an educated, thoughtful, and considerate one. The main focus of this book is on the political changes of Iran, mostly focusing from the revolution to 2000, though with extended commentaries of the time before, for context, and full of cultural, personal, and historical tidbits.

What is striking about Sciolino's book is how careful it is to maintain its distance of authority. While she has been covering the region for decades, traveled extensively, made friends and contacts all over the country in all kinds of situations, she is still an outsider looking in, trying to make sense of this world from her own viewpoints. Sciolino often points out her relative position, when attempting to bridge the gaps of these worlds, and the result is that the reader feels that they know this world better, but not that they have a complete understanding of it.

Obviously, with a book that is largely concerned with Iran politically (in terms of understanding it, not in terms of predicting or defeating or promoting, or whatever), the date is something to keep in mind. The last edition has a 2006 afterward that addresses this a little, but Iran has had a very interesting place in the world since then, and that simply isn't covered. This isn't a flaw in the book, it is simply something to keep in mind. That being said, I would highly recommend it, as it was striking and marvelous.

Elaine Sciolino is a long-time international correspondent for the NY Times and Newsweek. The book is an in-depth, first-hand look at Iran since the revolution- Elaine was on the jet that returned Khomeini to Iran to overthrow the Shah- she knew NOTHING about Persian culture/history/politics when she started that assignment 20 years ago, but is now considered an expert on the region. The book really opened my eyes and piqued my curiosity about this amazing country and its people. She spends a lot of time discussing women and their complex, important role in Iranian society- debunking a myth that they are a silent and oppressed majority.

I have so many thoughts about this book. Persian Mirrors was published in 2000, before 9/11, and certainly before the 2022 protests after Mahsa Amini's murder. That is all to say, in some ways, this book is very dated, seeing as Iran (and the greater Middle East) has evolved so much over the past 20-25 years. Sciolino wrote this book at a significant political time in Iran's government, where reformist politicians had a lot of power. It seemed to be a very hopeful time... which is sad, knowing just how oppressive their government has become in the present-day. Regardless, this book was well-researched and full of great insight about Iran, particularly, post-revolutionary Iran.

I am always wary of books, articles, etc. about Iran that have been produced by Western authors. There is a lot of cultural and historical nuance that they often do not understand, or acknowledge, which can lead to one-dimensional reporting about the country. This can be frustrating, especially in an age where everybody has an opinion about Iran (and yet, cannot pronounce the name of the country properly). Sciolino has her fair share of Western bias in this book, which was especially clear to me during her (frequent) discussions of why more Iranians don't leave the country. Iran is a collectivist nation; Iranians' identities are inextricably tied to their homeland. To leave is to abandon who they are. Sciolino, and more broadly, the West, struggles with this notion. Otherwise, though, her writing about Iran did not feel too biased one way or the other, which I appreciated. Hooray!

The discussion of Iranian Jews in this book was really eye-opening. Iran is a theocracy, and since the Islamic Revolution, religious minority populations in the country have decreased exponentially. Still, Iran is home to the greatest number of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel. I have long-wondered why my family is SO Zionist, even now. A someone who is unwaveringly anti-Israel, the chapter about religious minorities in Iran helped contextualize why my Iranian Jewish family continues to defend Israel. There is no separating Zionism from Judaism for them, they are one and the same. Any attack on Israel is an attack on the proliferation of Judaism in the Middle East (which is threatening for Iranian Jews, who are already persecuted because of their religion in Iran). An interesting notion... if misguided. Anyway.

Further, for as easy it is for Americans and Iranians alike to see one another as the enemy, these two counties are remarkably similar to one another... like problematic twin sisters. Particularly with the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, secularism faces mortal peril. When US politicians criticize Iran, they don't realize that they're looking in a mirror.

Ultimately, Sciolino paints a multi-faceted, complex, sometimes confounding and ever-evolving picture of Iran, and for that I am grateful. I recommend!

"Finally, I have learned that the Iranian revolution still hasn't run its course. It took some scholars of the French Revolution two centuries to finally declare that revolution dead. Many of the battles fought in the Islamic Republic today are the unfinished battles begun during the revolution's early days."