Myrthe's roundup

It's been a while already since I finished this challenge, but I never got around to writing round-ups. But here we go:

I read all the titles that were on my original list plus on extra. These are the books I read (links go to the reviews on my own blog):
* Simon Sebag Montefiore - Young Stalin
* Peter Balakian - Black Dog of Fate
* Shirin Ebadi - Iran Awakening
* Azar Nafisi - Reading Lolita in Tehran
* Mary S. Lovell - The Mitford Girls

All these authors were new to me. There was no major dud among these five books, I actually enjoyed them all, but the one I liked least was Reading Lolita in Tehran. My favorite was Black Dog of Fate.

The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell

The six sisters collectively known as the Mitford Girls were not only very different and interesting characters of themselves, living in an interesting time in history, but the way their lives turned out, makes them even more fascinating.

So let me briefly introduce them. The oldest, Nancy, was born in 1904 and became a very successful writer, getting much of her inspiration from her own surroundings. Then there was Pam, one of the quieter, lesser known sisters. The two younger sisters Diana and Unity more than made up for that. Diana falls in love with and later marries Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Fascist Party, and becomes an ardent supporter of Fascism and Nazism. Unity gets acquainted with and becomes a personal friend of Adolf Hitler. In fact, Diana may have been one of the very few if not the only person who counted both Hitler and Winston Churchill (he married into the family when he married a cousin of the girls' father) among her personal friends. Decca's political preferences go in an entirely different direction: she becomes a communist, in the late 30s she runs off to the civil war against Franco in Spain and eventually ends up in the US. The youngest sister, Debo, was born in 1920. Like Pam, she is one of the "quieter" of the sisters, though in her own way she makes something remarkable of her life, becoming a business woman and successfully leading and expanding her husband's estate, making it one of the few profitable estates in the country. There is a fairly recent interview with her here.

I found Decca the most interesting of the sisters, because she was the only one who actually broke free of the life and conventions of her class and ended up leading a life different from what was expected of her. She was the most unconventional of the six. The others, no matter how "funky" their political opinions, still stayed within what was expected of them by their social background. Debo and Pam, in The Mitford Girls at least, stayed a bit in the background, probably because they were the most "ordinary" of the six. Relatively speaking that is. I would have loved to find out more about them. Though for that I suppose I'd have to read one of the numerous other books that have been written about one or more of the sisters.

The most interesting part of the book were the chapters dealing with the period from the late twenties until the end of the Second World War. Anyone who reads this book cannot but read that part with hindsight, knowing what Fascism and Nazism would lead to, knowing about the Holocaust.

In fact, the same goes for Decca's becoming a communist in the thirties. At this time Stalin's terror was pretty much at its top. This was one question I had that didn't get answered in this book: to what extent did Decca really believe in Communism as an ideal, a solution for economic and social problems or was Communism for her a way to combat Fascism. Or was she just some sort of fellow-traveler. Even more important, to what extent was she aware of what was happening in the Soviet Union, the Gulags, the executions and persecutions, the famines following the collectivization of the agricultural sector. This book at least doesn't say anything about her knowledge of and attitude towards all this.

Many more pages are dedicated to Unity's infatuation for Hitler an Diana's support for Nazism and Fascism. During her life, Diana actually never apologized for or repented her support for Fascism. I found Diana an interesting woman as well.

Apart from the six women's roaring lives, this book also gives a very interesting picture of upper class life in England and especially of the social mores and conventions that the girls had to cope with and adhere to in the first half of the twentieth century. One thing that struck me was how the different families were on the one hand continually selling their mansions, houses, and parts of their estates because they couldn't afford their upkeeping anymore, moving into smaller living places all the time, but on the other they were also continually traveling abroad, sending their children to finishing school abroad, and they kept buying land and houses as well. All these changes in property were sometimes hard to keep up with. To my 21st century mind it was sometimes hard to understand the logic behind not being able to afford one thing, but at the same time spending so much money on other luxuries.

Another thing that struck me is how seemingly common extramarital affairs were in the society in which the Mitfords lived. Don't get me wrong, I am not a prude and all this adultery going on didn't bother me as such, it was just one of the things I noticed while reading the book. Extramarital affairs seemed to have been acceptable for both men and women, but at the same time once a woman was divorced, her social status was gone. This became very clear when Diana's affair with Oswald Mosley was discussed in the book. When their relationship started, Diana was still married to someone else. She did push through a divorce, despite the objections of many, her own parents among them. Diana's mother even forbade some of the younger sisters to visit Diana after her divorce.

All in all, I enjoyed The Mitford Girls enormously. Mary S. Lovell wrote a fast-paced, seemingly well researched book, that gives an intriguing look into the lives of a family that was notorious and famous at the time and also into upper-class life in England in the first half of the twentieth century in general. I highly recommend this book as an introduction into the Mitford family.

As always, if you have reviewed this book on your blog, leave a comment with the link to your review or send me an email with the link, so I can include it in the post.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Reading this book ended up being a somewhat mixed experience. I read the book twice, once in February or so and once last week. I don't really know why I picked it up again, I guess somehow "I wasn't done with the book" yet. This is probably also why I didn't manage to write a review after the first time. I started writing a review, but never finished it. This review you are reading now, uses parts of the original, half-finished one, but they have all been rewritten and added to.

When I finished the book the first time, I somehow couldn't get to grips with it. I finished it at the time, but I also felt that maybe it just wasn't the right time to read it. You know, how sometimes you are not enjoying a book, but you feel that you would probably like it better if you read it at some other time when your mood is different or you have less other things on your mind? That's how I felt when I first read Reading Lolita. I think it had something to do with not having time to read in larger sittings. For most of the book I only had time for a few pages at a time. I thoroughly enjoyed the few parts I managed to read in one larger sitting.

For me the weakest part of the book was the first part, both times I read the book. The first time I started the book, I read the first part (about 80 pages in my edition) in short stretches, a chapter at a time. This obviously didn't work, because I didn't get into the story. Even the second time around, being already familiar with the story, for me the first chapter was the weakest part of the book, it was too much all over the place. Only when I read a larger part in one sitting, did I like the book. For example, the first time I read the book I read the second part in one sitting and loved it. This second part ended up being my favorite part of the book, both times around.

As you can probably already guess, I am not one of those people who is gushing over Reading Lolita in Tehran. In fact, I have mixed feelings about the book. That is why this review might come across as a bit unstructured. I enjoyed the book, the first time probably more so than the second, but more on a rational level than an emotional level. If that makes sense. Rationally, I can definitely agree with all the praise that this is indeed a good book, one that gives a very good picture of life in contemporary Iran. I very much liked Nafisi's way with words, especially in portraying a person or showing a situation. Also, in the writing I could feel that Nafisi cares about the people she writes about. I actually enjoyed reading the book, more so the first time than the second time around.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is divided into four parts, each part centered around an author and one or a few of his/her works, Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Henry James, and Jane Austen. I haven't read any of the books and authors that form the core of the book, except for some of Jane Austen's work, but not being familiar with them didn't really hinder me. Though I think it does add to the experience of Reading Lolita in Tehran if you are familiar with the authors and books discussed. And it does make me for one more inclined to pick up works from the authors discussed when I will come across them.

Each part of the book also covers a central theme or period in Azar Nafisi's own life branching out to cover the stories of the seven female students that Nafisi chooses for a special literature class she teaches every Thursday at her house. One of my problems with the book is that I had a problem keeping most of the girls in the reading class and their histories separate. Somehow they blended into each other in a way, even though their stories and backgrounds were very different. The one that stood out most and became the most individual to me, was Yassi.

Something that started to bug me the second time around, was the question: "If this is a memoir, then how much of it is true and how much of it is made up?" The Author's Note at the beginning of the book says:

Aspects of characters and events in this story have been changed mainly to protect individuals, not just from the eye of the censor but also from those who read such narratives to discover who's who and who did what to whom[...]. The facts in this story are true insofar as any memory is ever truthful, but I have made every effort to protect friends and students, baptizing them with new names and disguising them perhaps even from themselves, changing and interchanging facts of their lives so that their secrets are safe.

I am perfectly okay with changing things to keep people's identities safe, no problem with that at all. The phrase that bothers me more, is "The facts in this story are true insofar as any memory is ever truthful", especially because in the story Nafisi mentions several times that her memory is not that great, implying there may be things she doesn't remember correctly. After coming across similar remarks a few times, I started thinking to what extent this is still a memoir and to what extent is it no longer. And if not, what is it then? Fiction? Semi-fiction? (Did I just invent a new word and genre?) How much of the book is based on real events and how do we know that? Don't get me wrong, I do not intend to discredit Nafisi or the book. It just got me thinking.

I think that a review written after the first time I read the book, would have been a lot more enthusiastic about Reading Lolita than the one you are reading now. I think that the first time around, despite my difficulties keeping the characters apart, I felt more strongly about the people in the book. Maybe, I shouldn't have read the book a second time, I don't know.

Still, despite this less than glowing review and the questions the book raised with me, I do recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran. I think the problems I have with it are more connected to me than to the book itself. It is a good book, well written, informative, giving a good picture of life in Iran (or at least of the intelligentsia in Tehran), though it needs time to get going. I have the feeling that it is also one of those books you need to take time for, it is best read in larger sessions I think (Sunday afternoons on the porch maybe or rainy days). For me, it is not one of those books you take with you to read in a few stolen minutes while waiting somewhere.

Crossposted at The Armenian Odar Reads.

Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi

I have gone off on a little Iran-reading spree recently. It started with Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Iran Awakening was number two and this weekend I started Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.

Shirin Ebadi is a human rights lawyer and activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. She is a woman I have enormous respect for. Iran Awakening is her memoir. I loved the book. It is well written; journalist and writer Azadeh Moaveni co-wrote the book (the link goes to her blog). The writing is not difficult to read and the book could make for a fast read. Still, I feel it is a book that needs to be read with attention, because every single sentence is packed with information, even if it is only three words long.

About her youth, Ebadi writes:

It was not until I was much older that I realized how gender equality was impressed on me first and foremost at home, by example. It was only when I surveyed my own sense of place in the world from an adult perspective that I saw how my upbringing spared me from the low self-esteem and learned dependence that I observed in women reared in more traditional homes. My father's championing of my independence, from the play yard to my later decision to become a judge, instilled a confidence in me that I never felt consciously, but later came to regard as my most valued inheritance.(p. 12)

I think this was my favorite passage from the entire book. The part about learned dependence and low self-esteem struck me, but also what it says about how children learn by example.

Ebadi studies law and starts out as a judge in 1970, at the age of twenty-three. Initially, she supports the Islamic Revolution in 1979, not really grasping yet what this will mean for her as a woman. This changes however, when first she is forced to wear a veil covering her hair and later when she is demoted to some clerical position, because a female judge on the bench is not exactly the image the new regime wants to display.

The following, rather long passage is about the changes in the status and the rights of women in Iran after the Islamic Revolution and about how far-reaching the effect of that is:

I prepared myself for all the possible ways the imposition of Islamic law could affect my life. I thought of all the ways it would make a difference: the courtrooms in which I could no longer preside, the ministry it would fill with clerics, the religious books I would now use as legal references. But in all my anxious speculation, I never imagined that fear of a new legal regime, albeit a catastrophic one, would follow me into my living room, into my marriage. Yet there was no use denying it. Ever since I'd read about the new penal code in the newspaper, I'd been behaving differently with Javad [Ebadi's husband]. It was as though I was wearing my skin inside out. The smallest perceived slight or off-tone remark set me on the war path or, as the Persian expression goes, guarding my front. I couldn't help it.

The day Javad and I married each other, we joined our lives together as two equal individuals. But under these laws, he stayed a person and I became a chattel. They permitted him to divorce me at whim, take custody of our future children, acquire three wives and stick them in the house with me. Although I knew rationally that inside Javad lurked no such potential monster, just waiting to break out and steal our hypothetical children and marry up a storm, I still felt oppressed. A couple of weeks into the new sullen, defensive person I had become, I decided that Javad and I should have a talk.

"Listen, I just can't deal with this anymore," I told him.

"We don't have any problems," he said. And he was right. Before all of this, our biggest disagreement had been over household chores.

"I know," I responded, "but the law has made problems for us. We used to be equals, and now you've been promoted above me, and I just can;t stand it. I really, really can't."

"So what do you want me to do?" he asked, throwing his hands up.

And then inspiration struck. I knew what he could do! He could sign a postnuptial agreement, granting me the right to divorce him, as well as primary custody of our future children, in the event of separation.(p52-53)

Eventually, in the mid-eighties Ebadi resigns from her work at the Ministry of Justice. She resumes her career in 1992 when the Iranian regime allows women to practice law again. This time, though, Ebadi stands on the other side of the bench: She starts working as a lawyer taking on mostly pro bono cases and cases that show how the Islamic Regime's discrimination against women is enshrined in the country's laws. In this way, she starts making a name for herself, both inside the country and abroad, and that name keeps growing and growing.

When I watched that broadcast [an interview Ebadi gave on CNN], aware that it was being beamed around the world, I also realized for the first time that I had become what you might call famous. Prominence is something that accrues gradually. You work and speak, write articles and lecture, meet with clients and defended them, day after day, night after night, and then you wake up one day and notice that there is a long trail behind you that constitutes a reputation. That's how it happened for me, anyway. How unimportant it was to me as a person, but how useful it became to my work. It meant journalists would listen if I approached them with a case and would help publicize it both inside the country and abroad. It meant that human rights observers around the world knew and trusted me, and launched swift appeals for urgent cases I brought to their attention, It meant there was now a face and a name attached to the abstract term "human rights" in Iran, and that finally millions of women who could not articulate their frustrations and desires had someone to speak on their behalf. I would never assume such a role for myself, but in the Islamic Republic, we have a problem with representation. Our diplomats around the world are, naturally, loyal to the regime, and the regime's credibility is not such that it reflects the true opinions of the people. The responsibility falls, then, on unofficial ambassadors to relate Iranians' perceptions and hopes to the world.(p.126-127)

The final chapter relates how Ebadi found out she had won the Nobel Peace Prize while she was in Paris and how she was received by tens of thousands of people, mostly women, at the airport upon her arrival in Iran. This chapter is very moving.

The chapters about Ebadi's human rights work were among the most interesting for me, but also among the most disappointing parts of the book. She mainly covers her human rights work by picking out a few notable cases she was involved in, but other than that, she doesn't write much about her work and her life during that period. The cases she uses are worth recounting. I also understand that there are probably large parts of her work that she probably cannot talk about because it would be too sensitive or possibly endanger people's lives inside Iran one way or another. I can also understand that she might not want to share a lot of her private life. But still, I would be interested in how her human rights work developed over time, how that influenced her position in Iran, how she goes around setting up her cases, getting information, things like that.

Despite this minor flaw (which is more my personal opinion, than really a flaw I would say), I enjoyed Iran Awakening very much and my respect for Shirin Ebadi has only increased. Together with Persepolis and Reading Lolita in Tehran, Iran Awakening is one of the books I recommend to anyone who wants to read and learn about Iran and about the position of women in that country.

A common theme in all three books is that they are all about women trying to cope with the restrictive regime after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The three women all come from families that were well-connected, well-educated and (reasonably) well-off before the Islamic Revolution: Ebadi's father was at one point a deputy minister, Nafisi's father was mayor of Tehran at one point and one of Satrapi's family members (I think her grandfather or great-grandfather) was prime-minister under the Shah or the Shah's father (I couldn't find the passage back to check). Also, they are all ethnic Iranian, none of them belongs to any of the many minorities in Iran and are all from the capital Tehran. So in a way, all three books do present a picture of Iran that to a certain extent is limited, because all three women write from the same background. On the other hand, I am not sure in how much this really distorts the general picture they give of life in contemporary Iran or to what extent their stories are only representative for a certain section of Iranian society. All three books, especially Reading Lolita in Tehran and Iran Awakening, do give glimpses of life in other segments of Iranian society as well.

This post is crossposted at my own blog The Armenian Odar Reads.

Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian

Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian is a memoir by the descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide who ended up in the US. Black Dog of Fate consists of several storylines, which are not always very sharply separated and partly intertwine. The first half or so of the book consists of Balakian's memoirs growing up in suburbia in New jersey in the 1950s and 1960s (Balakian was born in 1951). He grew up knowing he was Armenian, but not knowing anything about the history of his people, let alone why and how they ended up in the US. He was in most ways your average all-American boy, playing ball in the park, playing on the high school American football team, making out with girls in the backseat of the car, rebelling against his parents as a teenager.

No matter how much on the outside his parents and his family seemed integrated into the American lifestyle, inside their house some things were very different. The role of food, for example. Where all Peter's friends were served instant and deep-frozen dinners that were eaten in five minutes, dinner at the Balakian's was a family affair that took time and consisted of several homemade dishes. And then there were the Sunday gatherings of relatives at the Balakian's or Peter's aunts. These gatherings lasted for hours and Armenian food was an important part of them.

Then there was Peter's grandmother who doted on him, her eldest grandson. From time to time, out of the blue, she would tell Peter a snippet of her memories, a story, things that remained unconnected and that Peter didn't understood at all throughout his youth.

This first part of the book goes above and beyond being specifically a memoir of an Armenian youth in the US. It can in many ways be read as the history of an immigrant childhood in the US, maneuvering between being American and keeping one's ethnic heritage.

In his twenties Peter becomes aware of his heritage, of what happened to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and of how his own relatives escaped the Genocide and ended up in the US. His family's history forms the second storyline in the book. The third is a more general history of the Armenian Genocide mixed with Balakian's raising awareness of it. It also covers Turkish continuous attempts at denying the Genocide.

Read the full post on my blog here.

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Earlier this week I finished Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I seem to be on an unplanned (or semi-planned) Stalin-related reading-spree these days, with some more books on this theme on my TBR-pile and my current reading Tali, The Miracle of Chegem, also set in the Stalin-era.

Young Stalin is a biography of Josef Stalin from his birth in 1878 till the October Revolution in 1917. It covers his youth in the Caucasus republic of Georgia (at that time part of the Russian Empire) and his failed studies at the seminary in Tbilisi. Believe it or not, one of the greatest dictators of the twentieth century was on his way to become a priest when he got distracted by revolutionary activism and politics. The book goes on to describe Stalin's road towards becoming one of the leaders of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 besides Lenin and Trotsky. This is a history of violence, womanizing, fathering children out of wedlock, exile in far-away corners of Siberia and revolutionary activism. A very readable history, that is.

Parts of the book almost read as an action novel. One the one hand, this is a plus, but on the other hand I found it annoying at times, especially in the earlier parts of the book. After reading the Prologue (there's an excerpt here) - which describes a bank robbery complete with bombs, dead and wounded in Tbilisi in 1907 that caused headlines worldwide - for a little bit I was even unsure whether I wanted to continue. My main problem was with some of the words used to describe people and events. I'll give you one example. Three young women were members of Stalin's revolutionary group (or criminal gang) in the early 1900s. They participated in the bank robbery as well and are mentioned a couple of times in the earlier parts of the book. Apparently, these girls knew how to shoot, they could handle guns. Every time they were mentioned, some adjective reminding us of their shooting-skills was used to describe them: the "shooting", "gunwhielding" girls, you get the drift. I don't think they were ever mentioned without some such adjective. There was also lots of "swashbuckling" going on in the book. At times it almost felt as if the author was glorifying the "bandits", "gunslingers", etc. This eventually started to get on my nerves, but I decided to just ignore it. In the end, after finishing the book, I even realized that despite this somewhat annoying use of language, I found the first part of the book set in Tbilisi and Baku, the most interesting.

Other than that, the book is, as I said, extremely readable. Sebag Montefiore obviously did extensive research in Russian and especially in Georgian archives, using many memoirs and documents that had never before been used to document Stalin's life. I think that this is exactly where the strength of the biography lies and what makes the book an addition to existing literature about Stalin - the extensive use of newly discovered sources. Sebag Montefiore depicts Stalin convincingly as a self-obsessed man, prone to the use of violence from his early years on, increasingly paranoid. He shows clearly how events from Stalin's earlier years influenced his way of leadership of the Soviet-Union in later years and especially the Great Terror he unleashed in the 1930s. Which is not to say that these events were exclusively the result of events in Stalin's younger years, but they certainly formed his character and seemed to have influenced his reaction to certain people, behavior, and events.

I found it very interesting how the author would frequently mention in a footnote how certain parts of Stalin's life were changed or entirely eliminated from his official biography while he was still alive. His active participation in robberies for example, or his role in the revolutionary year 1917 or the children he fathered when he was in exile in Siberia. Certain blemishes were obviously not permitted in the biography of the Great Leader and Revolutionary Stalin.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Young Stalin and I learned a lot about the man Stalin, who he was, where he came from, how he became who he was in later years. I certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in Russia and Russian history.

Crossposted at my own blog The Armenian Odar Reads.

Myrthe's List

I'm late posting my list here, but the list has been up on my blog for a while already. These are the books I plan to read for this challenge:

* Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian. A memoir of an Armenian-American who learns about his heritage and about the genocide that happened to his ancestors at the beginning of the 20th century. Technically, this is a reread for me, as I read it this past summer. But it is so incredibly rich in content and so well written that I really want to read it again. I didn't get around to write a review the first time, so I'll discuss it for the first time for the challenge.

* Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi. She is a human rights lawyer from Iran and in 2003 won the Nobel Peace Price for her work.

* Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (to double for the Russian Reading Challenge), a biography of Joseph Stalin's younger years.

* The Mitford Sisters by Mary S. Lovell (to double for the Chunkster Challenge)

* Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.

I have one other book on my TBR-pile that I am not sure yet really is a memoir. I want to read it next year anyway, and if it fits, I will include it in my challenge list. The book is called Ararat by Dutch journalist and writer Frank Westerman (the book is in my native language Dutch). The book recounts the author's search for what meaning the religion he grew up with has for him and what place it has in his life now.

Shortly before I found out about this challenge, I read the memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan. I posted a review of that here. Also, over the summer I read an anthology with excerpts from memoirs and autobiographies of women. My review (with lots of links for inspiration) is here. The collection was wonderful and very inspirational. I added lots of the authors to my wishlist!