The Persian Bride (Hardcover)

by James Buchan (Author) "Each night, says Molavi, the prisoner forgets his prison..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mlle Farameh, John Pitt, Bibi Agha (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Luminous, exotic, terrifying, and brutal, The Persian Bride is a complex and worldly revelation, a story that, like the river that runs through the city of Isfahan, "carries on its surface traces of an earlier existence, and may indeed exist to submerge them, like the plane leaves it carries down in autumn or the pieces of its burst spring dwelling." In 1974, 18-year-old John Pitt arrives in Iran. By turns violent and introspective, James Buchan's narrator is "a mere instrument of change in a situation made brittle by violence, treachery and the veil." The chador is in Islamic society a barrier both physical and literal, shielding women from the transgressive male gaze. When John crosses that barrier by falling desperately in love with and marrying Shirin Farameh, the daughter of a general in the Iranian air force, all the forces of history descend upon him.

In his sixth novel, Buchan coaxes forth shadows--political, personal, spiritual--to engulf both narrator and reader. Past and present, reality and illusion, form the warp and weft of a story as intricately woven as the Persian rugs on which Shirin treads (an obvious, but accurate, metaphor). Buchan was a foreign correspondent for 10 years, so it isn't surprising that he should offer so solid a portrait of a world on the brink. What is surprising, and infinitely rewarding, is the bittersweet poignancy with which he brings that world to brilliant and supple life. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly
Garlanded with laurels from British reviewers, this novel by the British author of A Parish of Rich Women and High Latitudes certainly has many strengths: a wonderful sense of the sweet corruption of modern-day Iran, a supple and eloquent style and a story full of pain and longing. For an American reader, however, the apparent realism of many of the scenes and the strange narrative voiceAcarrying a kind of stoical madnessAin which it is told create a jarring awkwardness. The narrator is John Pitt, a young English hippie who strays into Iran in the 1970s, begins teaching English in Isfahan and becomes hopelessly infatuated with Shirim, a beautiful 17-year-old who is the daughter of a venal air force commander closely connected with the Shah. The two run away together, find a hideaway where they can live for a time as a couple and eventually have a child. Pitt is then seized as an English agent when the Iranian revolution exiles the Shah, and suffers years of imprisonment, while Shirim disappearsAperhaps also into an Iranian jail. For years, Pitt tries to learn about the fate of his wife and daughter, but eventually, resolved to die rather than continue to live his terrible prison life, he volunteers for the army. He is caught up in hideous carnage while battling the Iraqis, and later in Afghanistan, before the book winds to a touchingly bittersweet conclusion. Difficulty in identifying with Pitt, who seems in the early scenes sophisticated way beyond his years, remains a barrier to full absorption in the novel, brilliant and powerful as it often is. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (October 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061806740X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618067404
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,815,200 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Tale Of Iranian Politics & Persian Romance, June 8, 2003

By	Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Persian Bride: A Novel (Paperback)

This is one of the most beautifully written books I have read in a long time. I found myself marking passages in the prose, so I could return to them later and savor them at leisure, without a rapidly moving plot to deter me. It is also a difficult book to read. As with much good literature, it is necessary to concentrate and read every word. This is not a novel that can be skimmed, or speed read. It is definitely not a light read. Filled with symbolism, and allusions to Iranian culture, the Farsi language, ancient poets and older cities, it is the love story of one couple, and the story of a nation in political, cultural and social upheaval. If you read carefully, with patience, the story will unfold for you like a beautiful Isfahani rose.

A young Englishman goes to Iran in the mid-1970s. Many young American and European "hippies" passed through that country, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through until before the revolution in 1979. Iran was on the way to India, the destination point of many young westerners. The Beatles and other pop stars had made India a mecca for the young with its gurus, cheap drugs, native music, mysticism, etc.. And Persia was a romantic place stop on the way - with its exquisite, impressive countryside, hospitable people, and romantic, gracious and exotic culture. So, John Pitt finds himself in Isfahan, a fairytale of a city. There he meets the enchanting Shrin Farameh. They love. They run away and marry. They struggle to combine cultures and language and to make a world for themselves amidst the chaos and political nightmare that is pre-revolution Iran. Their marriage also carries with it tremendous political & personal consequences. But I won't go there now and spoil one of the more enticing aspects of the plot. Suffice it to say, that the couple is violently & tragically separated. Following the separation, comes suffering that could read like a chapter out of Job. But John is never deterred from his mission to reunite with his wife and the daughter he barely had time to know.

I lived in Iran from 1965 until 1968, and "The Persian Bride" brought so much of my experience back to me. It is a jewel of a novel - a masterpiece!

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could Have Been a Great One, January 21, 2001

By	Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Of all the places on the earth, I can't think of a more "foreign" place in the world to Westerners than Iran. Everything is different: the food, the architecture, the alphabet, the clothing, the language. Women can't go in public without a veil; all men and women pray submissively, facing the east; and the government is controlled by religious fanatics. And the history of the place goes back to the beginning of civilization. How fortunate then, that we come upon this novel, which purports to give us a glimpse of this society through the eyes of one of our own: an Englishman, at eighteen, who moves there in 1974 and stays there for good. And how unfortunate that this narrative is so clumsy, and so frustratingly difficult to understand.

It is narrated in the first person by John Pitt, a young man who leaves England simply because he doesn't wish to be like everybody else, with their girlfriends and their music. He ends up in Isfahan, Iran, where he is able to get a job teaching English to high-school age girls. He falls in love with one of them; the Persian Bride of the title. It is the sort of life-defining, all-encompassing love that most of us have had only once in our lives, and some of us never at all. He elopes with her, and for about a year, they enjoy a somewhat idyllic honeymoon. But it is an ill fated love: she is the daughter of a prominent member of the Shah's regime. Their relationship is problematic enough initially, but after the takeover of the Ayatollahs it becomes impossible.

She is taken from him and he is imprisoned, first by the Shah and then by the new regime. After many years he is given a chance to redeem himself by fighting for the Iranians against the Iraquis, and he does. He finally escapes from Iran, and spends the rest of the novel traveling through southwest Islamic Asia, searching for his love.

It is a compelling story. Mr. Buchan clearly knows his subject matter and is competent enough to draw believable if somewhat imperfect characters. The love story is also very powerful: the actions of both his narrator and his bride make this clear. But for some reason, either intentionally or unintentionally, the author has created a complex puzzlebox of a narrative that is extremely difficult to understand. I can't tell you how many times I found myself riffling back several pages in order to figure out what I missed.

A telling example is this: the narrator and his bride are travelling in a jeep, right after their elopement, on a sandy path in the desert night. She gets out of the truck and asks him to follow her. He does. About a dozen sentences later, he turns off the engine. Huh? Oh, he was following her in the jeep. I get it, but why doesn't he say so in the first place?

His first meeting with her family is incomprehensible. There are several characters present: the father, a colonel in the air force; the mother, who may or may not also be the princess; the bearded liaison, who is also a servant, I think; and two daughters. A further complication is that much of their dialogue is spoken in untranslated French. I read this passage several times and have still not figured out who is who.

He is separated from his wife while both are trying to escape Iran with the help of two drug smugglers. It is implied that the drug smugglers attempted to kill them both, but we are never really told in a straightforward manner. All we know is that the narrator ends up in prison, and that he doesn't know what happened to the girl. But he was there! Why doesn't he tell us what he knows? Why is this episode shrouded in mystery? Clearly, this omission is intentional. Is it an attempt to blanket the reader with the same confusion as the narrator? Maybe, but again, why?

The book is filled with these confusing incongruities, small and large. Towards the end, he is lying in a filthy hovel in Kabul, dressed in rags, drunk, and unbathed. A well-dressed female French physician he has never met comes to see him. "Do you want to make love to me?" she asks. Huh? Then he meets his nemesis, the afore-mentioned drug smuggler. I think the drug smuggler dies. I know the narrator loses his arm. But how? Again, why doesn't he just say what happened?

Islamic philosophy is strewn liberally throughout the novel. One of the tenets of it seems to be that we poor humans are not meant to know everything, and that we must submissively accept that which is beyond our understanding. Perhaps this is what the author is trying to convey. Perhaps. But, unfortunately, it is not going to be conveyed to the average reader, who after a hundred pages or so will angrily heave the book against the wall, never to pick it up again.

I don't regret reading this book. I feel like I learned a little something of Iran before and after the revolution, and I was touched by the enduring love story. But I'll never read it again. It is a book, sadly, that is destined for obscurity; a ninety-nine cent special in the library basement.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real treat to read, January 27, 2001

By A Customer

Mr. Buchan's knowledge of Persian culture and literature shines through, "word by word, meaning by meaning," in this enchanting novel.

This is by no means an easy book to read, neither in terms of the writing style, nor in terms of its content. The writing style is beautifully complex and poetic, mysterious. One has to really savor the passages. I wanted to read some of the sections over and over again, just because they are written so beautifully.

In terms of the story, although it is fiction, the context is very real and very conceivable. The trials that John Pitts goes through to become reunited with his wife are not far from the truth of what real people have gone through in that corner of the world. Sections of the story can be very sad, but still the book is a real pleasure to read; a tender love story to remember for a long time, with a refreshing writing style, definitely outside of the ordinary!