‘In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs’: Reflections on Iran

Pico Iyer reviews Christopher de Bellaigue’s book in the New York Times:

Debellcover583In his impenitently stylish and arresting debut book, [Christopher de Bellaigue pitches] us into the very heart and streets of the Iranian revolution today, its troubled consciences, and [gives] us so jolting a sense of ordinary lives and human losses that we can no longer see the country in simplistic, public-policy terms of ‘conservatives versus reformists.’ A young British journalist who writes for The Economist, de Bellaigue aims to complicate from within a world that too many of us associate only with turbaned ayatollahs and slogans of ‘Death to America.’ …

Read the review here.