I didn't know what to expect from this book. It bills itself as a memoir but reads more like a long, personal war correspondence. The author is inspired to visit her father's country Iran after her grandfather's death and ends up staying for over 10 years. The book is written like a long posthumous letter to her grandfather and details her experience melting into the culture as it grasps with modernity and change. In the background is the political unrest that feels as though it's constantly churning. The author demonstrates this feeling beautifully through her writing.
I had a few colleagues from Iran in my graduate programs and knew that they had experienced conflict in their home country but had no idea what it was about. I learned so much about Iran and potentially my friends' experiences through this book. Though it was at times a bit bland to read, I am so glad I had the opportunity to learn more about the politics and social/cultural changes that Iran and Persians have experienced in recent history.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"The taxi rolls along gray lines. That's all we can make out in the darkness: gray lines, as far as the eye can see, marking out the road to the airport. Outside, beyond the window, the night devours the last forbidden words I heard. How many will still dare to shout "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") and "Death to the dictator" from the rooftops of Tehran?

This is no article - it is a stillborn idea, just a thought. A thought that stretches out as the taxi speeds along those never-ending gray lines. This time, though, is no false start, no trial run. I am leaving for good."

Newly translated from French, journalist Delphine Minoui's memoir recounts her time living in her family's native Iran, where she returned despite being born and raised in France.

Minoui, a journalist, was drawn to Iran because of her family's heritage, and the strength of her connection to her enigmatic grandfather who'd died in Paris without returning home. He'd passed away before she felt her native land's pull, and seeking more insight into his life, she traveled to, and eventually decided to live for a time in the troubled country, coinciding with some significant events in its recent political and social upheavals.

The book is written as a letter to him, as she explores aspects of his life, staying in the apartment building with his widow, her surviving grandmother, in Tehran. While there, she takes advantage of the country's moment in contemporary history, investigating the turbulent sociopolitical changes that were pulling Iran to various extremes.

"You had left too soon. And I had come too late to meet you. The irony of history: you, who had always wanted to remain in your country had, for reasons I was unaware of at the time, ended up dying beyond its borders."

She interrogates the mystery and hypocrisy of their actions in Iran's morally strict but also hypocritical culture, like when discovering that her grandfather had a longtime mistress, who later becomes friends with his widow. The two women stay up late together, raucously laughing, and this funny, unexpected friendship serves almost as metaphor for the unpredictability and dual nature of the country itself. But otherwise, on the whole it doesn't entirely succeed in shedding light on the author's family's role, and her grandfather remains to some extent an enigma.

As a window into Iran's complicated past and politics, it's more thorough, although uneven. Sometimes I was captivated, elsewhere, my interest flagged without a particularly strong contextual background of my own. It's not quite as readable an explanation of government and social policy as Manal al-Sharif's  Daring to Drive is for Saudi politics, for example, but it does clarify some aspects.

In the acknowledgements, Minoui writes of an editor's frustration at her slowness in finishing the book, referencing rewrites and time's introspection that led to "a narrative thread that was much more personal than the simple journalistic testimony I had set out to create." She says that as a journalist, she's preferred to hide emotions behind facts, and that it was a novelist friend who encouraged her to center the story around her family history, leading her to "express this 'me' buried beneath a veil of modesty."

I found this such an interesting and valuable insight, because her own stories far outweighed the journalistic forays, in my reading. When she's describing that unlikely friendship between her grandmother and her grandfather's rowdy mistress, or a fairly tame party raided by the modesty police, or perhaps especially the devoutly religious man who proposes the Iranian workaround of a temporary marriage so they can sleep together (to her horror), the stories she's telling hold so much power through the personal lens. Sections tied more explicitly to the political or general make less of an impression.

Minoui's strength is beautiful expository writing telling these stories of her own experiences and those of the people she connects with. These are harrowing. One scene that impresses is of the chaos when a typical apartment party gets shut down by the morality police. Niloufar, the host, would later go on to serve time in prison for various offenses against the strictures of the social regime. When meeting later with Minoui in France, she explains that she still feels a draw to the country despite her harsh treatment and unjust imprisonments. This complicated nature of the feeling of national identity versus the reality of that country's treatment and control of its citizens is well explored and depicted, if still ultimately baffling, though Minoui has the language to construct apt comparisons.

Despite the suffering she had endured, she was attached to her country. She forgave it everything, just as some battered women forgive their violent husbands.

One of the most striking scenes from Minoui's own experience, demonstrating the harrowing conditions she faced not only as a woman, but as a western journalist, is when a young mullah (an educated cleric in Islam) she's interviewing tricks her into participating in a prayer service at his mosque. She says she's never prayed in her life, and to have to do it at a service in devout Iran was terrifying, as she worried she'd be sniffed out as an imposter.

The mullah explains, "The fanatics keep an eye out for even the slightest faux pas. Many times, the neighborhood Basij have tried to block access to my mosque. They accused me of blaspheming Islam, of presenting a skewed image of it. A young mullah who speaks English - they don't like that. So imagine if they learned that I had a meeting with a Western female journalist in my mosque..."

Upon the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Minoui observes the country is "one torn between a nationalist retreat and the desire for openness." There's a theme of this kind of dichotomy throughout, underscoring the difficulty of living there, or even living abroad and still being connected to there - Minoui experiences the reach of Iran's threatening control over journalists after a spooky incident in her Paris apartment.

It's a bit uneven, with gorgeously written and vividly depicted passages and others more forgettable, something similar could be said of the events it depicts in general. A worthwhile examination of Iran's tumultuous modern history and complex national identity with telling personal memoir.

I’m Writing You from Tehran
A Granddaughter’s Search for Her Family’s Past and Their Country’s Future

by Delphine Minoui

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Politics

Pub Date 02 Apr 2019

I am reviewing a copy of I’m Writing You From Tehran trough Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley:

Suffering the recent loss of her beloved grandfather and having a new career in journalism, Delphine Minoui decided to visit Iran for the first time since the revolution—whe she was four years old. The year was 1998. Delphine would spend ten years in Iran.

In that decade, great change comes to both the writer and the country, Many times the changes occur at the same time. Minoui is to begin to settle into daily life—she gets to know her devout grandmother for the first time, and makes friends with local women who help her escape secret dance parties , when the morality police arrive. She has to figure out how to be a journalist in a country that is suspicious of the press and Westerners. After she is able to learning Persian, she starts to be able to see Iran through her grandfather’s eyes. Making it become all the more crushing when the political situation falters. She finds herself caught up in protests and interrogated by secret police; friends disappear and others may be tracking her movements. She finds love, loses her press credentials, marries, and is separated from her husband by erupting global conflict. Despite it all her love for her country endures and she is able to discover her families past, a mission that changes her future.

I’m Writing You From Tehran is an unforgettable, moving view into a part of the world we rarely get an unobscured look into.

I give this book five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

I'm Writing You from Tehran is Minoui's conversation with her deceased grandfather, whom she barely knew. She was reared in Paris and as an adult has lived in many cities, but Tehran became her home for 10 years as she came to know the land of her father and grandfather. Her book reveals how troubled Iran continues to be as a county and a conflicted culture. It's a stark look at a tumultuous county that sashays between modern and traditionalist.

This is a wonderful book to learn about Tehran. It was informative and eye opening. I would recommend it to those interested in this part of the world.

I have little to no knowledge of this region, so I'm Writing You From Tehran was very informative. I recommend if you want to know more about the culture and political climate of the area. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

An informative eye opening look at Teheran .When the author returns to her families home she shares with their world their traditions a world I knew little about and loved learning through her eyes her experiences Really enjoyed this visit.#netgalley #fs&g

Loved this read. It was very informative and you can only imagine how it feels to live in a place like this. So it's good to read about it

I read primarily to learn, and I have definitely gained knowledge from reading Minoui's work. I knew incredibly little about Iran and it's politics prior to reading this and whilst I'm not an expert, I'm happy that by reading this I've been able to learn a little about Iran the country and it's people. Definitely not an easy book to read, but it made me feel so grateful and thankful to live where I live, and to lead the life I live. I cannot fathom being in similar situations that Minoui faced, but I undeniably share the pride that she exudes for her home country. She grants us an insight into a country during a period that was tough for it's people and portrayed by the western media in an prejudice light. Highly recommended if you're searching for insight regarding the Middle East from a firsthand account; more specifically the relations between Iraq and Iran between 2000-2010.