A talky, untidy, but nevertheless hard-to-put-down account of what happens when an expatriate journalist from a fabulously wealthy Iranian family resettles in her homeland to write about life under Islamic rule. As a woman, Mosteshar must wear the chador, or veil, plus trousers and coat in even sweltering weather to prevent any chink of female hair or flesh from showing, in conformity with endless (and changeable) social and religious codes. In her various quests to obtain a press card, get medical care for her relatives, and ultimately marry and divorce, she must deal with a bureaucracy corrupt beyond Kafka's wildest nightmares. Undeterred by the miserable examples of her female relatives, the wives of boors who, according to Mosteshar, use the Koran as a sanction to abuse and humiliate, she too, marries a boor—this one with another wife and family he requires her to both countenance and financially support. Her motives for marrying this man against her own better judgment are never made explicit. Naturally, the marriage is a disaster. Being Iranian, for Mosteshar, becomes a kind of gruesome psychological affliction: The good Muslim wife that she, despite her Oxford education, strives to be is, by Western standards, a victim of masochism and delusion. Finally, she does rouse herself to begin the difficult process of regaining her freedom and repairing her damaged self. Although the book contains much interesting information—we learn of the seegeh, or temporary marriage (basically legalized adultery), the ``morals police,'' and constant body searches—and often a comic tone, Mosteshar has evidently not awakened completely enough from her nightmare to tell her story with much perspective: There are far too many repeated assertions of how much she hated her husband and how disgusting his sexual advances and gobs of spit were. Overall, reading Unveiled, it's hard not to see today's Iran as a vast, ugly tragedy for women. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14061-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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