Women in Iran

Better late than never, i have at last read Marjane Satrapi's 4 comic book saga Persepolis in which she retraces the story of Iran through the prism of her own experience, as a child suddenly covered in a black veil, a troubled teenager struggling with her identity and a woman butting against the repression of a fundamentalist misogynist regim reminiscent of that other repression - extreme to the absurd - imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan until the US invasion.

Satrapi continues her exploration of the feminine condition in Iran in Embroideries, an endearing and loving ode to women of her family and their courage, humour and grace under repression. Finally, her Chicken with plums offers an infinitely moving and tender tale that immerses us into the intimate psyche of one of her uncles, a great musician whose life and death were marked by thwarted love, a universal story that Satrapi's quill makes so beautiful.

A chance encounter on the shelves of my library brought me Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as an excuse to continue my exploration of the lives of Iranian women. The book starts as something of a memoirs of a litterature teacher in Iran mixed with insightful and passionate thoughts on the works of Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen. It then evolves into a more personal account of her life and that of her students, in particular those that come to her house for a clandestine reading club jokingly baptized "Jane (Austen)'s friends".

The relationship between the individual and society provides the backdrop to a story offering beautiful portraits of women. The author pays tribute to the integrity and courage of those who resist and she shakes with indignation when, after they are worn out day after day by the Iranian regime, something ends up breaking in them. Nafisi writes with respect, intelligence and undertone, in order to avoid falling into simplicism. She points out the flaws of western society that one of her students dreams as being an ideal way of life, but she also highlights how another of her students, profoundly religious, suffers to see her decision to wear the headscarf become devoid of its meaning when the regime makes it mandatory to wear it. How would her decision - symbolic of a personal and moral commitment - retain all its value when wearing the headscarf is imposed on all women who have to comply, whether it would be their choice or not?

As i closed this Iranian cycle, i felt once more how fiction - and art more generally - is invaluable when it allows to bring closer, create understanding and spark empathy for lives so distant from ours, by giving them flesh and soul.

Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Never let me go... Beautiful title, whispering of yearning and melancholy, and beautiful book. It is difficult for me to say much about Kazuo Ishiguro's last work, not because i have little to say about it - far from it - but because it would be a shame to dispel any of its mystery and spoil the discovery of the poignant story of Kathy H. and her friends. I know, many reviews have already disclosed the gist of the story, but this is just in case you somehow managed to preserve yourself from it...

What i can say is how moved i was by this novel. It is a tale of innocence lost, confused identity, loves astray, and life... The life that we dream of, the life that we have and struggle with, the life that happens the way it does without us realizing at the time...

"It never occured to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that.

But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then - who knows? - maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another."

There is also the life that Kathy and her friends in particular cannot escape for one reason that will leave you in horror, dismay and sadness, and full of questions about science, responsibility and choice.

I can't wait to continue exploring Ishiguro's world of subtlety, finesse and empathy.

Il n'y a pas beaucoup d'etoiles ce soir - Sylvie Testud

I'm not sure if this has been translated into English. But check it out if it is... and if it isn't, learn French!!

First novel of actress Sylvie Testud, Il n'y a pas beaucoup d'etoiles ce soir (There aren't many starts tonight) treats us with funny chronicles on the life of a girl (a bit) like the others who happens to be actress. So she finds herself in extravagant situations, naked against a near stranger also naked for whom she must be seized by passion on order, naked again getting some make-up on the butt by a near stranger suddenly very intimate, not naked (well, not always, come on!), so clothed and ordered to jump from the 3rd floor for a movie and rebelling to defend her life against this order which insanity nobody-but-her realizes. There are others still, like her efforts to pretend to walk normally whereas she must calibrate her footsteps exactly to step between the rails that enable the camera to make a beautiful travelling and her unfathomable disappointment that her efforts go unnoticed by the audience, her dumstruck awe when she is lent a haute-couture dress, HER, one-night princess before returning to being a Cinderella who knows how to appreciate the loveliness of a glass of wine with her janitor...

Bitter-sweet chronicles, funny and caustic, but first of all funny. She has a sharp eye and a lively writing. This gives an extremely endearing book, evidenced by the fact that it's an undroppable page-turner. And we look at the actress in a different way. Next time we'll see her walking casually in a travelling sequence, we'll know. Sylvie, we'll know all the efforts you've done to walk exactly between the rails and we'll be swooning in admiration.