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Shah of Shahs

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 1,205 ratings · 116 reviews

In Shah of Shahs Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most infamous of the United States' client-dictators, who resolved to transform his country into "a second America in a generation," only to be toppled virtually overnight. From his vantage point at the break-up of the o...more

Paperback, 160 pages

Published February 4th 1992 by Vintage (first published 1982)

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Polish Books Published in English

2nd out of 87 books — 21 voters

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman

Best Middle East Nonfiction

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Oct 01, 2012 Maria Grazia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: giornalismo, letteratura-polacca, viaggi, politica-internazionale, ryszard-kapuscinski

La caduta dello Sha di Persia e l'acesa al potere degli Ayatollah fino alla creazione della Repubblica Islamica.
Attraverso la memoria di uno dei più grandi giornalisti mai vissuti, l'analisi sociopolitica di quel che fu e di quel che è stato, con molti indizi su quel che sta accadendo e accadrà.
Un libro che consiglio a tutti coloro che sono assolutamente convinti della bontà delle loro scelte.

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Sep 29, 2009 Gar Ver rated it 5 of 5 stars

I like to think of Ryszard Kapuscinski as the Polish Hunter S. Thompson, and, perhaps sacrilegiously to some, I also think the former deserves the fame and iconic recognition much more than the later. While Thompson was rightfully investigating the (hardly veiled) seedy underbelly of the American story, Kapuscinski was personally soaking in, on location, 27 revolutions in various third world countries. During his lifetime he was jailed 40 times and survived four death sentences.

Shah of Shahs is...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Tinker rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’m not sure what numerological theme is playing itself out here, but three of the artists I consider the greatest of my time each have an essential oevre of seven works: Bob Marley’s Island albums, Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature films, and Ryszard Kapuściński’s major poetic-prose texts of reportage. Shah of Shahs (1982) was the fourth book of his to be translated into English and is the fourth I’ve read; I would put off a final assessment until I read them all. Provisionally though, this book seems...more I’m not sure what numerological theme is playing itself out here, but three of the artists I consider the greatest of my time each have an essential oevre of seven works: Bob Marley’s Island albums, Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature films, and Ryszard Kapuściński’s major poetic-prose texts of reportage. Shah of Shahs (1982) was the fourth book of his to be translated into English and is the fourth I’ve read; I would put off a final assessment until I read them all. Provisionally though, this book seems to be one of the most carefully aimed. It considers the rise and fall of the cruelly despotic Shah of Iran, culminating in the revolution of the Ayatollah Khomenei. Its publication followed that of The Emperor (1978) about Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie, and the later book, toward the end, becomes an extended meditation on the essence of all such regimes (which are promising to become the rule, rather than the exception, in modern times). The pathway up to that is marked, as always with Kapuściński, by poetic methodology: anecdotes that build to an image, “spots of time” to use Wordsworth’s term. The major trope of the central of three sections is a chaotic pile of notes and photographs on the author’s hotel room desk, described one by one under headings such as “photograph 5” or “from the notes 6.” The tense is present: “Here are the Shah and his new wife….” I am struck by how much my own poetic practice reflects the Polish author’s, though my methods predate exposure to his.

Shah of Shahs has become immediately crucial to my understanding of current events in the Middle East, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly for that purpose. However, as is pointed out by critics, Kapuściński’s narratives are not fully “reliable” history, whatever that might be. Not only is it personal testimony, it pares away and simplifies—hallmark of the poetic method. Here, the supreme role of the CIA in eliminating Mossadegh, who was Iran’s last hope for democracy, as payback for nationalizing its oil, is suppressed by the author, though at the time of publication this responsibility was becoming widely acknowledged. This decision sharpens his predominant narrative (the Shah vs. his people) but somewhat vitiates another—the now-obvious irony that an unintended consequence of that intervention is the region’s unshakably persistent hostility to the U.S.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that the proper analogy for Kapuściński’s work would be Shakespeare’s. I can think of no other poets who take the issues of governance, and the welfare of entire nations, as a theme. The social range under consideration and the compassion for specific individuals encountered in this author’s peripatetic immersion in the life of our time is as affecting as the Bard’s, and raise his books to a level beyond reportage.

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Dec 14, 2011 Shane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: iran, non-fiction, middle-east

Kapuscinski, ever the poetic journalist, has written a compelling little book here. This book is a convincing argument that the Shah was worse than the Islamic republic. I don't know that I've ever heard anything as bad as burning the eyelids off of a mullah in order to force him to watch his own daughter being raped. He gives a good sense of life under the shah, which is strangely the cynical opposite of Iran today: now hijabs are mandatory, before they for forbidden; now, turbans are a mark of...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kapuściński's genius lies in the heady mix of accessibility, originality and profundity. This book isn't really about the Shah, it isn't really about Iran - it is a thesis on absolute rule, the psychological affect this rule has on a population, the conditions that must prevail for the population to rise up, realise its own strength and overthrow the absolutist and, most importantly, why revolutions invariably disappoint. It is due to the latter theme that I consider myself fortunate to have rea...more Kapuściński's genius lies in the heady mix of accessibility, originality and profundity. This book isn't really about the Shah, it isn't really about Iran - it is a thesis on absolute rule, the psychological affect this rule has on a population, the conditions that must prevail for the population to rise up, realise its own strength and overthrow the absolutist and, most importantly, why revolutions invariably disappoint. It is due to the latter theme that I consider myself fortunate to have read this book at the same time as the Arab Spring is petering out. Democracy doesn't inevitably replace absolutism, because the tentacles of the absolutist state are deep and the psychological battering that a people take over decades, centuries, millenia of absolutist rule means that the removal of one man, the temporary embodiment of this state of affairs, can mean little in the grand scheme of things.

For Kapuściński Iran under the Shah was a nation of liars, bootlickers, sycophants and philistines. Honesty was invariably greeted with suspicion. Surely someone that spoke their mind must have been in the pay of the Shah, a member of Savak?

"All values thus came to have a reversed meaning. Whoever tried to be honest looked like a paid stoolie. If someone had clean hands, he had to keep them deeply hidden because there was something shameful and ambivalent about purity".

Those that couldn't take it any more emigrated if they could. The intelligentsia was obliterated and the philistinism of Savak knew no bounds. Apparently if they got their hands on someone that they knew was "in the habit of reading books... they worked them over with particular malice". The Shah knew that universities were potentially hotbeds of discontent so he sponsored Iranian students to study abroad, at a far larger cost than investing in domestic education. Many of these intellectuals would never return. This is why when the Shah was removed the intellectual, liberal centre was so weak.

Kapuściński was a veteran of many revolutions. Why did so many end in disappointment? Absolute rulers in the Third World tend to focus on modernisation, factories, industrialisation - the Shah believed he could build the Great Civilisation based on petrochemical wealth. Kapuściński believes that to genuinely modernise a country the villages must be modernised, not the urban areas. In times of industrialisation the rural dweller moves to the urban centre but brings with them their backward superstitious beliefs. Many years in the city may "modernise" their views but coming in to replace them, following each stage of development, will always be more young men from the backwaters. Modernise the village first, then a country may reach true modernity.

In his introduction Christopher de Bellaigue excuses Kapuściński's habit of generalising. Kapuściński is a master of prose, his works are entertaining, informative and stimulating - they are, after all, and despite their literary value, works of journalism. For this reason they must come with a disclaimer, do not take everything at face value, do not expect everything to be corroberated by all the evidence. For example not all rulers directly encourage philistinism, many do endevour to create their own culture - the Communists attempted to impose Socialist Realism, but no one stopped reading Tolstoy, Chekhov or Dostoyevsky - Hitler attempted to replace Weimar decadence with a pure Aryan culture. They attempted to supplant one culture with another, not stamp out any trace of it. This is not to say that Shah of Shahs is not a worthy study of absolutism but one should handle it with care.(less)

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Nov 29, 2012 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoires, history, iran

Written shortly after the fall of the shah, by a journalist who had, then, already experienced and reported on some 20 revolutions. This short book's an interesting enough read.
The story contains three parts. The first briefly describes some of the author's experiences, shortly after the fall of the shah. The third part, totally useless, is a collection of ramblings on political science.

It is the second part, called 'Daguerreotypes', which is the saving grace and almost brilliant part of the b...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: happyendings, kind-of-depressing, groups-of-people, the-persians

In a brief exchange with Elizabeth just now about King Leopold's Ghost, I admitted that books like that one make me feel I need a novel afterwards, to help me get back my equilibrium or faith in life and human beings or something like that. And it's true: I really like nonfiction and in many ways I do prefer it -- even if a nonfiction book's not that great, when I'm done at least I've learned something, whereas reading a crappy novel usually just feels like wasted time.

But a diet of all nonficti...more In a brief exchange with Elizabeth just now about King Leopold's Ghost, I admitted that books like that one make me feel I need a novel afterwards, to help me get back my equilibrium or faith in life and human beings or something like that. And it's true: I really like nonfiction and in many ways I do prefer it -- even if a nonfiction book's not that great, when I'm done at least I've learned something, whereas reading a crappy novel usually just feels like wasted time.

But a diet of all nonfiction inevitably turns me into a neurotic semi-suicidal, semi-homicidal, neutron-bomb-craving misanthropic mess. Nonfiction is about the truth, and, uh, well... I can't handle the truth! No one can, it just sucks too much. I'll read about atrocities in the Congo, twentieth-century genocides, totalitarianism and state-sponsored torture... and it's good to know these things but man, it does feel hard to know it. And so that's why we have art, to make sense of this shit, or momentarily to escape it, or just somehow to take the edge off and help us keep waking up in the mornings to confront such a world. Honestly, if it weren't for fiction I'd probably break down into a blubbering, nonfunctional ball of gel on the floor just from thinking about how fucked up people are. The way fiction prevents this is a mechanism I'm not going to get into, but it does, and that's something for which I'm extremely grateful.

Recently I've been reading a lot about Iran, in particular the Revolution and the hostage crisis. This is the first book I've read by Ryszard Kapuściński, and it's an interesting piece of journalism that in many ways reads like experimental fiction. It begins with Kapuściński hanging around his hotel room in Tehran after the Revolution, when most other journalists have left. The book is largely made up of his descriptions of photographs and interviews and impressions, pulling back later on from Iran to make more general observations about revolution, based on others that Kapuściński has observed.

This is kind of hard, heavy stuff to be reading about, and for me what made this book great was the way that it ended. Its final passages did what literature does, but that straight reportage or nonfiction can rarely accomplish: it expanded up beyond what it had been describing, and located some kind of meaning, or beauty, or different kind of truth, that transcended the ugliness and pain of history's bloodshed. That is, it made art, and Shah of Shahs I felt was notable for that: sort of like a whiskey that contains a hangover cure, this was one stop shopping for me, and I liked that about it.(less)

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Apr 03, 2012 Tom Nixon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ryszard Kapuscinski is a writer that I need to get better acquainted with- a Polish Journalist who seemed to have the best career of all time, drifting from war to war and revolution to revolution writing books about them- Shah of Shahs is his story of the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran and although it's a slim little volume, it packs one helluva punch.

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Kapuscinski could have tossed out an up-to-the-minute blow by blow account of the final days o...more Ryszard Kapuscinski is a writer that I need to get better acquainted with- a Polish Journalist who seemed to have the best career of all time, drifting from war to war and revolution to revolution writing books about them- Shah of Shahs is his story of the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran and although it's a slim little volume, it packs one helluva punch.

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Kapuscinski could have tossed out an up-to-the-minute blow by blow account of the final days of the Shahs regime. The guy was actually in Iran watching it all which would have given such an account a certain fascinating sense of immediacy- put it also would have been pedestrian and somewhat humdrum, I think. After all, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a fairly important event in 20th Century History- people have written on the subject almost ad naseum.

Kapuscinski takes a different approach however, angling the book towards getting into the nuts and bolts of what actually makes a revolution tick and how the long, tragic history of Iran and the Shah's frankly silly insistence on trying to catapult Iran into modernity overnight. The majority of the book is Kapuscinski telling the story of the Iranian Revolution by describing a series of photographs which confused me at first but had me thinking: 'damn, this guy's got game' very quickly. From the rise of the Pahlavi Dynasty right through to the end in 1979, Kapuscinski tells the story of the major events of the Iran through photographs, an elegant, creative and interesting way to tell a story that's been told a thousand times before.

Kapuscinski's style has been described as 'literary journalism' or 'magic journalism' setting his style as a non-fiction counterpart to 'magic realism' which goes along way towards explaining to why I enjoyed this book so much- I've always been a major fan of Marquez, Allende, Amado and all the magic realists and you can tell than Kapuscinski if he doesn't deliberately draw from this school of literature certainly can be claimed as a distant Polish relative.

Overall: This is a short, powerful volume chronicling the fall of the last Shah of Iran. Kapuscinski is a master of literary journalism that relies on sparse and powerful language to tell a story that students of history might have heard dozens of times before- but never like this. (There's not a wasted word in this book- there's no room for them!) He's a crusading Polish journalist that spent most of his career drifting from Revolution to Revolution- and he's just shot up my list of 'authors I need to read more of- and fast!'(less)

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Jul 05, 2007 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ryszard Kapuściński can make a place you have never seen seem as real as your fondest memory. In this slim volume he presents the Shah's Iran, and what happened to it.

I found this book so engrossing that I missed my bus stop one morning by about half a mile.

A terminal political junkie gave me this book. Thanks Dirk!

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Sep 19, 2011 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays, history, nonfiction

This is a remarkable piece on Iran before and during the revolution. There are two things about it that make the context of the book even more interesting.

The first is that, like several of the Iranian intellectuals that Kapuscinski presents, he appears to have done some work for his country's espionage service in exchange for their support of his writing. The second is that this translation is apparently missing about fifteen pages of material on the role of the CIA in Iran. The combination of...more

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May 01, 2012 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-comedy, heart-of-darkness, literature-fantastique

The Emperor is a bizarre and at time grotesquely comic portrait of the last Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie. It is also a detail and evocative exploration of tyranny. Kapuscinki in a much more impressionistic mood details the rule and fall of another tyrant the last Shah of Iran in the Shah of Shahs. By focusing on tyrants of U.S. client states he uses a trick employed by other Iron Curtain writers (Ex. Kadare) to critique autocracy in genera,l as in general most dictatorships are the same wh...more

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Feb 19, 2013 César Lasso rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What can I say? I killed two birds with one stone – I have some dear Iranian friends and this is my beloved author's insight into the country. I loved the read - the first thing I'll say is that I can perfectly recommend it. Even if your impressions are different from mine, it would be difficult for you to get tired of this work, for it is not a long one.

It was not my favorite by Kapuscinski – those are "Heban" (English translation: "The Shadow of the Sun") and “Imperium”. In those two, the auth...more What can I say? I killed two birds with one stone – I have some dear Iranian friends and this is my beloved author's insight into the country. I loved the read - the first thing I'll say is that I can perfectly recommend it. Even if your impressions are different from mine, it would be difficult for you to get tired of this work, for it is not a long one.

It was not my favorite by Kapuscinski – those are "Heban" (English translation: "The Shadow of the Sun") and “Imperium”. In those two, the author collected his impressions of decades of long visits as a reporter – in the first case, portraying the complex mosaic of African nations and peoples and, in the second, something similar but related to the nationalities that had integrated the crumbling Soviet Union...

But this was my third favorite and, if said about Kapuscinski, it means it is very good.

Somehow, I might compare it to the controversial “The Emperor”, where he portrayed the surreal last royal ruler of Ethiopia. That one was the champion of surrealism… The Shah might be seen through that lens, but I think it can be reduced to something more simple: selfishness, greed, and absolute despise for his own people.

Besides, there’s another important difference between “Cesarz” (The Emperor) and “Szachinszach” (Shah of Shahs): while the former is focused on the lunatic absolutism of Haile Selassie, the latter is a pretext to throw glimpses on Shia Islam and the Iranian people – right after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, back into the times of the Shah, further back into the beginning of Islam and right to the bottom of the Iranian written history some 2,500 years ago.

The book is apparently chaotic, something like the impression a Westerner might have of an Arab “medina” or an Oriental bazaar… It is like a collage of loose images or feelings about pictures, recorded conversations, and people Kapuscinski met in Tehran. That might make you think, when you start the read, that it seems a bit erratic and a poor work. Nonetheless, I believe it won’t take you long to find that all the scattered impressions start becoming related to the previous and you begin to suspect or feel a general picture.

Occasionally, a couple declarations felt questionable or a bit too categorical… Say, for example (if you don’t mind my poor translation from the Spanish translation), when the author states: «To the Iranians, the principle of revenge is as old as old is the world». Well, I believe the principle of revenge is not specific of the Iranians – it is universal in fact. You can find it in the most ancient legal code that has reached us in written form – Hammurabi’s (the idea of that code was “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”). The idea is also typical of Arabic literature, where you can see that victims had to abandon their comfort and start action to “wash their honor” (and the Arabs are not Iranians). Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was a Jew. When he said “if someone slaps you, do not hit back but rather offer your other cheek” (oh my, that should be a metaphor!) so that suggests that revenge was also connatural to Judaism. The Nazis were neither Iranian nor Arabs nor Jews, but if one of their soldiers was killed in an ambush, they would immediately kill ten innocents from the country they were occupying. Actually, I am neither Arabic nor Iranian, neither Jew nor Nazi –I am a Westerner– but my first reaction whenever I felt I had been unnecessarily attacked was strike back. It took me years of experience to start considering… Wait! Hold your horses! Count up to 10 before replying! What do I get and what might I loose through revenge? I really believe that many Iranians would take similar considerations instead of abandoning family, position, well-being, everything! – just to pursue the dream of revenge. Revenge is not Iranian, it is universal, and I think that sentence was a little slip.

Slips apart, the book was full of brilliant observation. I don’t know if the Iranians would identify a 100 percent with Kapuscinski’s remarks, but I do believe that he was far more able to catch a glimpse of the Iranian soul than most Westerners might have.

And the last paragraph of “Szachinszach” was simply poetical…

The book was first published three decades ago. At the time, religion helped a lot to overthrow the Shah’s despotism. I believe that now many Iranians live under an authoritarian regime they don’t like. It is not a matter of religion, it is a matter of the use people make of religion. So, from that point of view, you might think that Kapuscinski’s work is now old-fashioned… But I don’t think so. The situation has varied so you should vary your guess and coordinates, but “Szachinszach” will give you clues to understand a great Middle-Eastern people. And, certainly, if you just want to have a peek into what the Shah’s regime was like, the book is great for that purpose.(less)

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Feb 07, 2010 Drew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From the cover you would believe that Shah of Shahs tells the story of Mohammed Reza, the last Shah of Iran. But in fact the destiny of this cruel, hapless and slightly silly habitué of Swiss ski resorts is only part of the picture.
Rather, Kapuściński's theme here, as in The Emperor before it, is not the person but the ecosystem of repression that keeps a dictator in power. In the Shah's case it was the villainous secret police, known as Savak, that shored up his throne with a rule of terror tha...more From the cover you would believe that Shah of Shahs tells the story of Mohammed Reza, the last Shah of Iran. But in fact the destiny of this cruel, hapless and slightly silly habitué of Swiss ski resorts is only part of the picture.
Rather, Kapuściński's theme here, as in The Emperor before it, is not the person but the ecosystem of repression that keeps a dictator in power. In the Shah's case it was the villainous secret police, known as Savak, that shored up his throne with a rule of terror that in Kapuściński's description makes Stalin's Russia sound like a walk in the park.
Eventually the Iranian people turned on their oppressors in a bloody revolution that was powered by self-sacrifice and martyrs' blood. Here too, Kapuściński is riveting in tracing the moment at which inner resistance turns to outward defiance, leading with ever greater urgency to the ultimate overthrow and ejection of an unloved monarch. But in this the Shah is no more present than any other member of the crowd. He is, rather, a cipher in military gear, a puppet cut loose and greying at the temples.
In his work as a reporter for the Polish news agency, Kapuściński witnessed dozens of coups and revolutions. The Iranian revolution is described in a series of meditations, interviews, reportage and diary sketches that communicate both the tension and the feeling of emptiness that followed the elation of overthrow.
Once the Shah left, the "good" revolutionaries, who wanted democracy and toleration, were quickly removed by a group of "ignorant bearded thugs", Kapuściński tells us, calling to mind Yeats's dictum that "the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity". And thus Iran"s current leadership was born.
To my mind Kapuściński is one of the twentieth century's great writers in any genre; indeed, genre is something it's difficult to pin on him. Too profound for travel writing, too poetic for politics, too political for belles lettres, and too playful for sociology, he stands above the common fray. If you're interested in dicovering his world, this book would be a fitting beginning.(less)

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Aug 09, 2010 Corey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this at the same time as Michela Wrong's "I Didn't Do It For You" which might explain why I found so much fault with Wrong's book. This book was succinct, interesting from beginning to end, and the style was original. Wrong's book had photographs and they didn't convey the message as well as Kapuscinski's descriptions of photographs that I couldn't see.

I also learned a lot from the foreword by Christopher de Bellaigue (which I read after having read the book). I know nothing about journa...more

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May 22, 2013 Mauberley added it

This is superior reportage and a tremendously useful distillation of the events surrounding the fall of the Shah and the outbreak of the 1979 revolution in Iran. It contains one of the most horrific passages I have ever read: 'Ayatollah Teleghani emerges from prison with only a short time to live because of the way he has been treated. He has no eyelids. As he watched, Savak agents raped Teleghani's daughter, and when the ayatollah closed his eyes, they burned his eyelids with cigarettes so he w...more

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Sep 11, 2009 Scooper added it

interesting perspective on the iranian revolution told by a reporter who was there in the years (months?) leading up to the revolution. one definitely sees the how the brutality repression, and economic incompetence of the shah's regime led to the revolution. love the way he paints an overall picture of a country and a time through a series of anecdotal stories and eye witness reports. He was accused of making things up at times, and he may have, but to me they still work both in accurately pres...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Tank Green rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, memoirs

i think this is my favourite genre of writing: the fictional-memoir. there is a lot wrong with this in terms of fact, but it does something bigger than relate the fall of the shah. it digs into the reality of humanity - of our emotions - and therefore depicts / constructs the entirety of us, including the bits we'd like to keep hidden. in doing so he writes about more than that period of iranian history - he writes in a way that allows us to read the specific as a metaphor for the universal. i'l...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ho scoperto un grande giornalista e scrittore. Ha una dote, Kapuscinski: riesce a spiegare un evento complesso come la rivoluzione khomeinista che ha rovesciato il regime dello scià in una forma chiara e semplice, tale da essere comprensibile pure da chi, come me, non ne sapeva molto.
Prende lo spunto, per raccontare, da fotografie ed appunti trovati nella sua camera d'albergo.
E così veniamo a conoscenza della personalità dello scià, un ometto innamorato di sè stesso e bisognoso dell'approvazione...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: geopolitics, violent, history, nonfiction, translations-into-english

I picked up this book because of the rather striking epigraph in The Blind Assassin. This is a book about Iran during the last days of the Shah, before he was toppled and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Ryszard Kapuscinski is an openly literary writer of nonfiction; the back cover says that he "brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity" to his subject; his Wikipedia article mentions Adam Hochschild describing his work as "magic journalism," in comparison to fictional ma...more

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Jul 17, 2007 mellyana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: narrative-journalism, endurance-needed

Shah of Shahs agak sulit aku ikuti. Awalnya. Lama-lama, aku terkesima. Kapuściński bercerita melalui foto-foto (dan catatan percakapan). Bercerita berbekal foto. Foto. Dokumentasi visual. Konon, gambar bisa berbicara seribu kata. Tapi cobalah untuk menuliskan ulang sebuah foto, sulit bisa menjadi seribu kata. Barangkali sepuluh kata lebih tepat. Setidaknya, itu kalau aku yang disuruh bercerita. Ia menulis dari foto yang paling pertama ia terima. Itu adalah foto seorang prajurit yang memegang ran...more

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Aug 12, 2012 M. Milner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: good-history-stuff, favourites, nonfiction-you-ought-to-read, world-lit, essays-and-reportage

A slim, powerful book on the rise and fall of Mohammad Reza, the last Shah of Iran. Starting in the final days of the revolution, Kapuscinski writes of the propaganda on state television and the barren city of Tehran before looking back at how Reza gained power, gradually turning Iran into a dictatorship with the power of Savak, the secret police (a favorite method of torture: the frying pan, a heated metal sheet an unlucky prisoner would have their hands and feet strapped to) and a military arm...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Wolfe Steelbone rated it 3 of 5 stars

YO DIS BOOK RIGH CHERE LIKE FULL OF WONKY JOURNO WERDS BUT I MEANS THE PROSE MAD SPLINTERED N WRONG MOS THE TIME TOO BUT AS A LIKE HISTORICAL NONFICTION BOOK ER WHATEVA ITS KICKS IT RIGHT IN TALKIN BOUT REVOLUSHOS N ALL ESP WITH REGARD TO THEM BOYZ N GALZ IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EAST YA HEARD. 3 STARS CAUSE THEM CHATTER BOX WORDS AIN ALL THAT GREAT AND HE LIKE A MAD PUSSY THROUGHOUT SON. ITS LIKE YO PROTAGONIST, START KICKIN SOME ASS STEADA SITTIN IN YO HOTEL LOOKIN AT PICTURES FREAL. POP POP.

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Apr 23, 2011 Muhammad Atif rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone who wants to have an informal taste of Iranian History

Great book i loved the way the author has put down history in an extremely interesting way. Instead of going visa the routine track the author has actually choose a few pictures , during the description of which,he paints on our minds a picture of the Shah and the Iranian revolution. The end part where the author gives a little elaboration on what a revolution is all about and touched the usually untouched area of life getting back to the boring track once the revolution comes to an end. This is...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Sean Mccarrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was not the Persian version of The Emperor that I had in some ways expected. It was an overview of the Iranian revolution of 1979, in fact it was an overview of all revolutions, through the setting of a dirty hotel room. It used the Shah and a brief history of Persia as a background, but the true heart of the book lied not in the relatively common place descriptions of monarchy, but in the unique approach that Iranians take towards forging a national history.

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Nov 18, 2012 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Kapuschinski is brilliant at evoking the fear and suspicion engendered in the days of the Shah and the almost total disconnect between the ruling elite and the people. He also writes exceptionally well. It is a very effective writing tool that he uses; focusing right in on individual expressions and moments in time that dramatise and illuminate the entire political structure. Kapuschinski is a thoughtful, poetic and brave writer.

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Jul 12, 2011 Lisa Sansone rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of my all-time favorite books, by one of my favorite writers. I recently tried to find a copy in my County Library, as well as the local bookstore, and no one had one (in fact, they had almost nothing by this writer). What a shame. I wish there were more people like him in this world. He tries to bring such respect and sensitivity to his reporting from other cultures. I personally think he is terribly under-rated.

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Jan 01, 2013 Ashwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful narration of the events that lead to the Islamic revolution in Iran. The best part of the book was the author's description of the post-revolution scenario - the sudden feeling of emptiness and helplessness that punctuates the chaos following an upheaval. Beautiful book and a must read for anyone who wants to understand the Iran story and the historical context of its conflict with the West.

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Sep 30, 2011 Joyce rated it 5 of 5 stars

Using the Shah of Iran as his main example, Kapuscinski gives an excellent thesis on the nature of despotism, and what inevitably happens when despots get overthrown. When he wrote this book, Kapuscinski had been an eyewitness to 27 revolutions in numerous countries. In all of these revolutions, he says the process was exactly the same. Kapuscinski shares his insights in this terrific short book.

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Dec 12, 2011 Dave Golombek rated it 3 of 5 stars

There are beautifully insightful sections of this book, where the author really captures some of the essence of the Iranian people, why they never fully accepted the Shah's rule, and why Savak's reign of terror broke down. There are also vague, seemingly irrelevant portions of the book that left me confused -- a description of 12 photographs, but without the pictures themselves (in the edition of the book I read); the lack of description of how power passed from the Shah's father (a Shah himself...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is easily the most moving book on the revolutionary fervor leading up to the 1979 revolution in Iran. You'll only learn a few names and dates in this short book, but, far more importantly, you will grasp what it felt like to live under the shah and after him. This book could have been easily fleshed out to 500+ pages, but its ability to remain economical and concise is amazing considering the topic at hand.

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About Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuściński debuted as a poet in Dziś i jutro at the age of 17 and has been a journalist, writer, and publicist. In 1964 he was appointed to the Polish Press Agency and began traveling around the developing world and reporting on wars, coups and revolutions in Asia, the Americas, and Europe; he lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups, was jailed forty times, and survived four deat...more

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“Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power. It is a filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money.” — 2 people liked it

“Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts.” — 2 people liked it

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