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Title: Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran
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Manufacturer: Mage Publishers
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $11.98
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers One of the best books I've ever read | | It's simple, beautiful and illustrative. You will be transported to a different place at a different time. | | Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers A Lost World | | O'Donnell's "Garden of the Brave in War" is a lovely lost gem of a travel memoir-- his account of his time on a farm in northern Iran in the 1960s. It's elegant, delightful, sad, and engrossing. It's also about a lost world-- Iran a decade or so before the Revolution, an Iranian countryside still only dimly aware of "modernization", where politics-- if anyone notices at all --are local and tribal, where the author is not an infidel or a "Westerner", but rather seen by the locals as a hapless city dweller who needed to be gently taught about country life. O'Donnell conjures up visions of a lost time and place-- the Iran where he spent fifteen years, an Iran far removed from the ominous place it seems in 2007 --and tells a lovely sad story. This is one of those forgotten books I'm glad to be able to recommend. | | Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers Garden of the brave in war is charming, entertaining, +More | | Terence O'Donnell does a masterful job of vividly describing the scenery, the people, the lives, the simplicity and the colorful everyday lives of "locals" in the villages and towns he has stayed and visited in Iran. His observations, I found, very insightful and as best as I have experienced them myself, very accurate. I was saddened to know that he has passed away, this would have been a man I would have loved to sit down with and hear his stories, over a hot cup of sweet tea. | | Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers Garden of Brave in War | | This book involes a great deal of humor, culture, and one man's experience in the wonderful and somewhat mysterious country of Iran. It is an extremely easy book to read, and is very informative. When finished with the book you think about how good the book was, and later you realize how much you learned about the Iranian culture. I recommend it to anyone interested in culture and/or the Middle East. I also recommend it to anyone who is looking to read a book so different it is refreshing. | | Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers A Masterpiece | This book is a treasure, beloved by anyone who has spent time in Iran, and/or who loves the English language used in a way unique to O'Donnell. It has been comared to Out of Africa - the deceptively simple wording, pared to the bone. I have given this book to people in Europe and America and they all, without prodding, contact me to tell me what a wonderful experience it has been for them.
Of course things have changed since he was there! But this gem will bring forth an Iran that many of us were blessed to know (1960's). None of us would pretend to have understood the complexity of that wonderfully rich culture but O'Donnell was comfortable with almost anyone, highranking to druckdrivers. He spoke the language, he knew all the verses to some of the rather louche folksongs, yet he never pretended to be The Expert. One of your reviewers, an Iranian, who gave the book 3 stars, has got it wrong. This is a memoir, evoking a period when Americans roamed freely, coming into contact with a very ancient civilization which many of them couldn't pretend to understand. If the recounting of the experiences of this extraordinary American, who understood more than any of us in Shiraz at the time, appears condescending to anyone, I have to say they are missing the point.
Any brilliant travel writing is bound to upset someone, but this is a piece of writing that leaves such questions moot, they shouldn't even apply. One man's experiences, and this has some riotously funny ones, have made for a fabulous read, period. | | Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran by Mage Publishers Book Description | | When Terence O’Donnell, an American who lived in Iran for fifteen years in the 1960s and 1970s, was asked what he was doing there, he replied, "The conviction of all Iranians, of most of my compatriots, and indeed of the Russians, was that I was engaged in intelligence work. I was, and what is more I filed a daily report. My employer was myself and my reports consisted of eight thousand pages of journal. This book was drawn from that material." For ten of those years, O’Donnell lived on a farm near Shiraz, in southern Iran, where he raised mainly pomegranates, but also quinces, grapes, chickens, and bees. He also made many Iranian friends. His memories of that time have yielded a masterpiece of national portraiture, wonderfully alive to the complexities of the Iranian character—courteous, capricious, deeply religious yet also playful, generous, and poetic. A work of shimmering beauty and sensitivity, Garden of the Brave in War will deepen every reader’s understanding of the often elusive country that lies behind the headlines. |
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