In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs — A Memoir of Iran
By Christopher de Bellaigue
Harper Collins, 2004
280 pages, $35

REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs is a story of Iran told from the standpoint of someone who is both an insider and an outsider. Christopher de Bellaigue is British-born, but lives in Tehran, speaks fluent Persian and is married to an Iranian woman.

De Bellaigue tells the story of Iran in a journalistic rather than a personal style. In that sense it’s not really a memoir. The author doesn’t disclose much about his own life in Iran, with only passing references to his Iranian wife and young son.

De Bellaigue uses a patchwork of interviews with Iranian people and snippets of Iranian history interweaved with his own thoughts and observations of daily life in a country so much of us know little about.

There is a particular emphasis on the Iran-Iraq war, which began a year after the 1979 revolution and didn’t end until 1988.

The weaving together of history and interviews with people who were involved in those periods of history is the thing I enjoyed most about the book, bringing the terrible tragedy of that war to life through the stories and suffering of the veterans who fought in it.

I finished the book with an urge to understand more about Iran, its people and their experiences. I followed it up with a perfect companion book — a very personal memoir of life in revolutionary Iran, Journey From the Land of No, by Roya Hakakian, who grew up at the time of the 1979 revolution. This book gives a vivid and tangible sense of the turmoil and excitement of the revolution as it unfolded.

From Green Left Weekly, April 20, 2005.
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