Suri & Co.: Tales of a Persian Teenage Girl

These lively fictional tales offer an unusual perspective on Iranian life and society. Told by a high-spirited, intelligent, willful (if sometimes insecure) teenage girl, they recount incidents in her daily life in Iran in the 1970s before the Revolution. Without any ideological "message," they present human interest and social comment. Their central characteristic is humor, from slapstick to subtlety, which can be easily appreciated across cultural boundaries. As we meet Suri's immediate family, distant relatives, and friends, we are discreetly introduced to upper-middle-class society in an Iran undergoing headlong westernization. The contradictions between this process and traditional Iranian mores are particularly well depicted. Much writing in recent years has been concerned with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume reminds us that there is always an ongoing human dimension largely unaffected by political and religious changes. Another feature is the homogeneity of this collection, created by one author and interpreted by the translator.