Darius Kazemi reviewed From a Persian Tea House by Michael Carroll
The tea parts are good
3 stars
This was... okay. It's a travelogue of an Englishman in Iran in 1953. I have a specific interest in this period because it's when my father was a child in Iran, so it aligns to some extent with the stories of Iran I grew up with. Even so I found the book a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes incredibly tedious and other times insightful or laugh out loud funny.
The author is of course a clueless English traveler. I'd say he is about 50% aware of his status as such. There are some times when he talks about his own behavior in Iran that I think "wow what an asshole", though mostly he comports himself well and has reasonable empathy for the people he encounters.
The best part of the book is the very detailed depiction of a single tea house in Isfahan and its regulars. This makes up …
This was... okay. It's a travelogue of an Englishman in Iran in 1953. I have a specific interest in this period because it's when my father was a child in Iran, so it aligns to some extent with the stories of Iran I grew up with. Even so I found the book a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes incredibly tedious and other times insightful or laugh out loud funny.
The author is of course a clueless English traveler. I'd say he is about 50% aware of his status as such. There are some times when he talks about his own behavior in Iran that I think "wow what an asshole", though mostly he comports himself well and has reasonable empathy for the people he encounters.
The best part of the book is the very detailed depiction of a single tea house in Isfahan and its regulars. This makes up only about 10% of the book but is a huge highlight.
I also found the times when he touched on politics really interesting. 1953 is just a few years after the CIA backed coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister, which installed Reza Shah as the monarchic (and American allied) ruler. It's really interesting to see some of the "deeply religious" anti-shah sentiment he encounters in his travels from the vantage of the present, knowing that the Islamic Revolution would come 25 years later.
His descriptions of bargaining in the bazaars are also good, and are true to the tales I've heard (and also match my experiences in other middle eastern countries).
There's too much description (I think) of how hard it is to get around. There are descriptions of Persian history that are filtered through random "scholars" he met that are dubious or outright false. I also am personally offended that he didn't find chelo kebab to be particularly good or bad!!!
Anyway, I don't regret reading this but I feel like I could have loved it a lot more.