Viaje por el Irán de ayer y hoy, Ángela Rodicio
& Leopoldo Stampa (Debate, 2010)
Did you know that stories in Iran don’t end with “… and they lived happily ever after”? Instead, they’re left open ended. Just like now in the former ancient Persia, where 2500 years of history seem to have been forgotten by the last 30 years, the years of the Islamic Revolution. Since 1979 Iran is a pariah State, cut off from the international community of which it used to be a permanently active member. Yet a surge of young people – 70 per cent of Iran’s population of 70 million is under 30 years old – are a tangible and impossible source of energy for a system where, in the privacy of their homes, people live in the 21st century whilst in public they are anchored in the Middle Ages. An impossible situation.
To find an explanation, the book’s authors – the journalist and writer Ángela Rodicio and the Spanish Ambassador to Iran and concomitant historian and writer Leopoldo Stampa – criss-cross Iran from North to South and East to West at a crucial time.
Little known episodes such as the travels of illustrious Spaniards to the former Persia or the analysis of how Iran has turned into a pariah state make for a book that is captivating and essential to understand current international relations.
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