Customer Reviews

Suri & Co.: Tales of a Persian Teenage Girl (CMES Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

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This book is exactly as the title describes: Tales of a Persian Teenage Girl. She is a young woman who is sharp and direct, and her comments are quite witty. It just so happens that the teenager is Persian, and therefore the culture is reflected in Suri's circumstances. Neither Islam nor politics have a role in the book; in fact, her family appears quite secular and non-political. The author's commentary, via Suri, is more of the trials and tribulations that an independent-minded Persian teenage girl from an upper-class family would have been facing in 1960s Iran. It's a very enjoyable read that will have you outright laughing at times.

8 stories about Iran before the Islamic Revolution. They all center around Suri, a teenage girl from a upper-class Teheran family.
Suri is, as a lot of teenagers are, highly critical of everything and everybody around her.
The stories are rather simple. They tell us about every day-events like a party Suri goes to, the birth of her sister's baby etc.
These stories were first published around 1970. The author left Iran after the Islamic Revolution and now lives in France.

Above I read about this book: "This volume reminds us that there is always an ongoing human dimension largely unaffected by political and religious changes".
I don't think so: Suri's life would have been affected by the 1979 revolution. As alcohol is forbidden, the first story in which Suri drinks whiskey in a restaurant would not have happened. As parties where both boys and girls attend are forbidden, the second story in which Suri goes to a party would not have happened. And so on.
Exactly this is the problem in Iran. The "ongoing human dimension" is affected by the Khomeiny-clan. In other words: one can not live as one wishes in that country.