Iran: A People Interrupted

A deeply informed political and cultural narrative of a country thrust into the international spotlight.

Praised by leading academics in the field as "extraordinary," "a brilliant analysis," "fresh, provocative and iconoclastic," Iran: A People Interrupted has distinguished itself as a major work that has single-handedly effected a revolution in the field of Iranian studies.

In this provocative and unprecedented book, Hamid Dabashi—the internationally renowned cultural critic and scholar of Iranian history and Islamic culture—traces the story of Iran over the past two centuries with unparalleled analysis of the key events, cultural trends, and political developments leading up to the collapse of the reform movement and the emergence of the new and combative presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Written in the author's characteristically lively and combative prose, Iran combines "delightful vignettes" (Publishers Weekly) from Dabashi's Iranian childhood and sharp, insightful readings of its contemporary history. In an era of escalating tensions in the Middle East, his defiant moral voice and eloquent account of a national struggle for freedom and democracy against the overwhelming backdrop of U.S. military hegemony fills a crucial gap in our understanding of this country.

Publishers Weekly

Declaring at the outset that he has an "ax to grind," Columbia University professor Dabashi focuses on the last 200 years of Iranian history, through the lens of a worldly cosmopolitan. He rejects the familiar dichotomy between the "traditional" and the "modern" in Iran, arguing that it's at best ill-conceived and at worst a tool of European/American colonialism. Instead, Dabashi suggests the notion of an "anticolonial modernity," predicated on Iranians' struggles "against the colonial robbery of the moral and material foundations of [their] historical agency." While he raises many worthy questions, Dabashi's thesis is weakened by a lack of nuance. He also exhibits many of the flaws he decries, establishing, for instance, his own dichotomies ("for us the world was squarely divided into two opposing parts: those who ruled it and those who resisted this tyranny") and using a historical terminology to dismiss people, ideas or national projects with which he disagrees (e.g., equating Iran's Islamic Republic with America's "Christian empire"). Peppered alternately with delightful vignettes from his Iranian youth and dense academic-speak, the result is a book that may please those who agree with its author, but is unlikely to win over the uninitiated. (Mar.)

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of highly acclaimed scholarly books and articles on Iran, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and philosophy of arts. Among the leading U.S. dissidents and a frequent lecturer around the globe, he lives in New York.