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  • Today, "Teheran Trip" by Mahsa Mohebali published on February 22, 2023 by Éditions La croisée.

Ju lire les Mots, blogger and contributor to the reading group 20 Minutes Books, recommends "Teheran Trip" by Mahsa Mohebali, published on February 22, 2023 by Éditions La croisée.

His favorite quote:

Don't forget Newton's first law: never think when you're craving, otherwise you'll think with your ass

Why this book?

  • Because Iran and the excesses of its political regime have always intrigued me. Few books approach this country through the prism of youth in distress, while we can find many films or documentaries. It was also an opportunity to discover a new pen, whose voice carries beyond borders, to alert public opinion. Published for several years, Mahsa Mohebali, may be successful in her country, but she is banned from expression.
  • Because the political context in recent months, opens a breach to denunciations and allows this book to emerge and it has the merit of having been written by a woman whose story evoking drugs, as well as many taboo subjects, shows a youth confronted with desires, aspiring to a more than legitimate freedom.
  • Because in this city where everything is falling apart, the rich flee and those who have no choice experience chaos. In this stifling and heavy atmosphere, Shadi's obsession is to have his next dose. We will follow her over a day, in her quest, according to her encounters, a gallery of characters looms, all as lost as her, in this context of time suspended between discouragement and disillusionment.
  • Because Shadi poses both as a spectator, without being completely an actor of her destiny, because hope could shatter her dreams, be stifled to the point of breaking the slightest desire to live. Opium helps him to forget, but at times, a burst of life brings a dazzling to his desires, to his reflections.
  • Because it is a strong, brilliant, touching text, which strikes the spirits by its narration with introspective detachment, with an incredible parallel between the moods of a junkie whose only dream is to emerge and a country, with a boiling youth who aspires to enjoy simple joys, where others leave Iran and its privations. It is also a destabilizing text, which oscillates between reality and fiction, to the rhythm of earthquakes, allegory to political upheavals, in the face of this youth who dreams of transgressing the rules, between hopes, disappointments and courage.

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot. Shadi, a young Iranian, plunges into opium to escape her parents, her family, and her compromised future, in a Tehran shaken by earthquakes, both physical and political. For a few hours, she escapes and makes us discover a disenchanted and fascinating youth.

The characters. Shadi, young woman, junkie and addicted to opium, the dog character in his own right. The hysterical mother locked in her fear, the grandmother (Mamie Molouk) with Alzheimer's who runs away, the diametrically opposed brothers and the absent father that we guess in one of his mistresses...

Places. Tehran in the grip of earthquakes.

The time. The plot is contemporary and takes place in 1997-1998, a period when Iran was crossed by two earthquakes.

The author. Mahsa Mohebali, born in 1972 in Tehran, Iran, is the author of several novels and short stories. His novel Teheran Trip has been published in Sweden, Italy and the United States. It was highly noticed and ranked in 2022 in the best books of the New Yorker.

This book was read with emotion mixed with admiration for this allegorical construction, on the condition of women and her aspirations, where the author, places Iran at the heart of an apocalypse, to make us discover a disenchanted youth, but full of hope.

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