cover image The Blindfold Horse: Memories of a Persian Childhood

The Blindfold Horse: Memories of a Persian Childhood

Shusha Guppy. Beacon Press (MA), $17.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-7042-0

A gifted weaver of tales with an artist's eye for sketching characters in context, Guppy evokes the magic, cultural traditions and social fabric of her growing-up years, which were greatly affected by both Reza Shah's efforts to westernize Persia in the 1920s, and the ensuing brutal revolution led by bigoted Mullahs. With warmly humorous, yet unsentimental anecdotes, she recalls neighbors, friends and members of her large and distinguished familysuccessful merchants, legal and religious scholars and philosophers like her father. She also describes the not-so-submissive daughters of hedonistic and eccentric heads of family, who, having been emancipated by the Shah, suddenly and inexplicably in the late 1970s renounced their freedom to conform to the Islamic fundamentalist regime. The relatively liberal attitudes of the author's parents enabled her to study in the West, where she married and has pursued her literary and artistic careers. (Jan.)