[REVIEW] "The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran" by by Shida Bazyar; translated by Ruth Martin
"One day my children can ask me how a revolution happens, and I will serve them up the answer on a silver platter engraved with a gun and sickle. What actually, really happens after a revolution is something I've never heard anyone ask out loud." "The nights are quiet in Tehran" was a pleasant surprise. I expect the usual romanticization of poverty, oppression and emigration that comes often with this kind of books. Instead I was met with an analytical, multigenerational view of the Iran conflict, which left me more informed as a reader and more empathetic as a person. I think the comparison with "Women Without Men" is natural and needed to better understand the different points of view proposed by these two authors on very similar themes. Shahrnush Parsipur's a women of the 70s-80s in Iran, and is much more rooted in Persian tradition and culture. This is notable in the fable-like frame of the story, the beauty and poetry of the language, and the ...
