Minister Without Portfolio
Memoir of a Reluctant Exile
by Hooman Majd
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Pub Date Sep 09 2025 | Archive Date Sep 09 2025
Description
From the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ comes a globe-spanning memoir of identity, exile, and reinvention.
In many ways, Hooman Majd has led a charmed life: the son of a high-ranking diplomat in pre-Revolutionary Iran, he grew up in the upper echelons of Iranian society and in cosmopolitan diplomatic enclaves in San Francisco, London, and Washington, DC. As a young man, after Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolution in 1979, Majd sold real estate to fellow Iranian exiles in Beverly Hills, tried his hand at writing, and found his way into the orbit of Chris Blackwell, the impresario of Island Records and mastermind behind the careers of Bob Marley & the Wailers, U2, and other global superstars. After rising through the ranks—and sometimes, but not always, the charts—Majd went on to write three influential books about his homeland and served as a consultant and contributor to NBC News on Iran. Yet, for all this authority and access, Majd could never truly call any place “home.”
As he recounts in his open-hearted memoir Minister without Portfolio—named for the tongue-in-cheek title Blackwell bestowed on him—Hooman Majd has always been shadowed by a sense of precarity, even as he bantered with ambassadors’ wives at smoke-filled soirees or traded gossip with Grace Jones and Dennis Hopper at Goldeneye, Blackwell’s Jamaican estate and the former home of Ian Fleming. Majd had seen first-hand the havoc wrought on his family—and so many others—by the Iranian revolution. All his life, he has been questioned, frisked, or even threatened at points of entry. Though he has risked several return trips to Iran, today, officially, he can never go back. How can you build an identity when no place will claim you as its own?
Told with grace, insight, and longing—and filled with riotous, sometimes shocking portraits of larger-than-life personalities and illuminating insights about the entanglements between Iran and the West—Minister without Portfolio is a trenchant memoir of belonging nowhere and everywhere at once.
Advance Praise
Praise for The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
“Perhaps the best book yet written on the contradictions of contemporary Iran... It captures like no book in recent memory the ethos of the country, in elegant and precise prose.” —Reza Aslan, Los Angeles Times
“Illuminating... Captivating... A discerning guide to a complex country.” —Joseph Richard Preville, The Christian Science Monitor
“Essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the paradox that is Iran (as well as America) in the post-Bush world.” —GQ
“In this delightful book, Hooman Majd, a gifted storyteller, takes us on a tour of his own private Persia, which is also the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The results are illuminating, humorous, sobering, and ultimately reassuring.” —Jon Lee Anderson
"Great books can be bridges too, and a prime proof of this is Iranian author Hooman Majd's wonderfully informed and enlightening new book, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran... He writes elegantly about the art of ta’arouf, the polite dance of self-deprecation—a kind of one-downmanship—that dominates social interactions. He expertly dissects Iran’s superiority/inferiority complex, born of centuries of manipulation by the West and a stunted nationalism... A refreshing and mind-opening book, a nuanced and informed portrait of one of our most misunderstood global neighbors.” —Don George, National Geographic Traveler, Book of the Month
“Profound in insight... Hooman Majd’s delightfully unclassifiable book, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ [is] part travelogue, part reminiscence, and shifting between bemusement, grudging respect, and despair... While blithely exposing hypocrisies and paradoxes, Majd does not spare the Islamic Republic’s critics, either.” —Max Rodenbeck, The New York Review of Books
“The book is particularly strong on class and social identity in the maturing Iranian revolution... He is also very strong on the relationships among Shiite theology, history, and contemporary Iranian culture, both secular and religious. What makes the book urgent now, however, is its peculiar angle of vision... His carefully observed case against the assumptions of the regime-change crowd in the West is a very important contribution; one hopes that American policymakers will take the time to absorb this book.” —Steve Coll, The New Yorker
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9798988670063 |
| PRICE | $35.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
