Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences - Hardcover

James Buchan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848540663 ISBN 13: 9781848540668

Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

A myth-busting insider's account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and transformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of our time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Middle East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign policy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on his lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the history that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi-culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religious regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and instead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He puts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly radical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Revolu-tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Persian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and theological tracts, Buchan illumi-nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative.

About this title

About the Author

James Buchan first visited Iran nearly forty years ago. A student of Persian and Arabic, he was for many years a correspondent of the Financial Times in the Middle East, and later in central Europe and the US. He has written more than a dozen works of fiction and history, including a portrait of Edinburgh in the eighteenth century (CAPITAL OF THE MIND), a biography of the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty) and a philosophy of money (Frozen Desire). He works a small farm in Norfolk.

Review

Buchan's story of the Iranian revolution is the best book on Iran I have ever read * Sunday Times * An outstanding analysis of the legacy of Iran's revolution * Sunday Times * His story of the revolution is the best book on Iran I have ever read. He has the pen of the travel writer Robert Byron, and a trove of Persian poetry and lore shines from every page. Shafts of insight alternate with piercing wit, and his ironic dissection of both the shah and the ayatollah would do credit to Gibbon * Sunday Times * Elegant and pugnacious * Daily Telegraph * Rejecting theory, Buchan relies on old-fashioned virtues: a careful reading of the Persian and foreign sources, his immersion in the country's culture (he was a star Persionist at Oxford) and an instinct for the events and personalities that turned Iran from Middle East poster boy to society in upheaval. Buchan brings a keen, satirical eye to the story of a corrupt, intrigue-ridden court and a modernising Shah who cut through traditional Iran as if "the conflicts of centuries were being squeezed into half a dozen years" * Prospect * 'Buchan has a sure touch with narrative. Days of God is skilfully constructed, deftly weaving a path through the thickets of complex events while displaying the wider historical background against which this political earthquake was staged' * Literary Review * 'An elegant and textured analysis' * The Economist * 'Buchan is capable of delivering assessment of stark precision' * Sunday Telegraph * 'A superb and original history of the Iranian Revolution. It's essential reading' * Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday Books of the Year 2012 * 'A soundly argued account of the causes, course and consequences of the revolution . . . Buchan, a Persian scholar and former Financial Times foreign correspondent, puts his first-hand experience of Iran to perceptive use' * Financial Times * 'Combines deft broad strokes with intricate details, shading in apparent dry subjects with innumerable and delightful anecdotes' * The Economist * 'James Buchan's elegant prose sparkles on the page' * New Statesman * 'A succinct elegant book, written in an easy, conversational tone which never makes its big ideas or profound implications seem intimidating' * Sunday Telegraph * Praise for James Buchan:'James Buchan writes like a dream' * The Times * 'Buchan enlists all his narrative skill, learning and panache in this story of modern Iran' * i * 'Sharply written and persuasive . . . Days of God offers a number of valuable, if frightening insights' * Scotsman * 'This book comes alive with a wonderfully detailed and authoritative account of the Shah's final days and the murder and mayhem that followed' * The Spectator * 'Buchan's prose is excellent, with the vocabulary, range and atmosphere of a literary master, the clout of the sharp historian, and the ability to leaven history with fascinating snippets of intimate information, delightful, droll or horrifying. His research is thorough . . . This is a compelling, beautifully written history of a country which has produced great literature, art and a warm people whose lives have been manipulated by other countries with ulterior motives and by their own autocratic and theocratic dictators' * Independent * 'Marvellous book. It is hard to imagine anyone else possessing the combination of qualities Buchan brings. He has the journalist's analytical eye and the novelist's imagination . . . He can segue between the theology of Qom and the gossip of the Shah's improvised, petrodollar-funded Versailles, swooping all the while onto details either grim or hilarious or both at once that leave the reader scratching his head and wondering how the author can know so much . . . It is written with the ancient historian's ambition - the ambition that Gibbon, Macaulay and Marx would recognise - that the record of humanity's blunders and bloodbaths and half-understandings should itself be an object of elegance and ironic beauty' * Francis Spufford, Evening Standard * 'James Buchan trains a more scientific eye on how Iran's wealth-creator king was replaced with a Shia divine uninterested in modern government. He mines the literature in Persian and English to better effect than any historian so far . . . Why did the shah's subjects not accept his notion of history racing to a conclusion in prosperity's glow? In this fine, elegantly written book, Mr Buchan lays out the answer in detail' * The Economist *

Edition details

• Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1848540663
• ISBN 13: 9781848540668
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 482