Monday 6 July 2020

Some of the latest books I have read ...



Despite being completely different as far as writing styles are concerned and the subject matters discussed, these books have a few things in common, namely the fact that they are all memoirs partly connected to or set in Iran and their authors grew up between "so called" different " cultural worlds".
 
 
Behrouz Boochani  is an Iranian of Kurdish origin, Roxana Saberi an American reporter born to a Japanese mother and Iranian father, Ashley Dartnell was born in Tehran, having spent most of her childhood and adolescent years in Iran, despite being born to an American mother and English father, whilst Jennifer Klinec was born in Canada to Hungarian and Croatian parents having become a temporary bride to an Iranian, whom she later got officially married to.




They all touched me differently, with the first two - "No friend but the mountains" by Behrouz Boochani and "Between two worlds: my life and captivity in Iran" by Roxana Saberi, being the "hardest" ones to read, taking into account that both are a recollection of their temporary life ordeals.

 
 
 




Entirely written using Whatsapp "No friend but the mountains" is an autobiographical account of Behrouz Boochani's journey to Christmas island and his subsequent incarceration in the Australian detention facility on Manus island.
 
 
 










"Between two worlds: My life and captivity in Iran" is a recollection of the author's five month emprisonment in Tehran, interwoven with rather inspiring stories of some of her fellow prisoners.
 












"Farangi girl" is a compelling memoir of a rather difficult and "unique" childhood and early adolescence, mostly spent in Iran.
 
 
 
 
 
"Fascinating ... a desperate quest for sanctuary and redemption which in the end discovers solace in the most unexpected places" - The Times
 













A moving memoir of a relationship that didn't fit into the mathematical marriage formula of the adequate variables which were expected to have been entered so the outcome was successful, according to the Iranian "ancestral rules" interspersed with food is what "The temporary bride" is about.  
 
 
 
"Our relationship was stiched together of fragments of devotion, strong will and despair" though in the end belonging and emotional nourishment in exile was found.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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