Call number
955 R
Collection
Publication
Vintage (1992), Edition: Reprint, 160 pages
Description
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 old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution.Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.
Subjects
User reviews
LibraryThing member pessoanongrata
Kapuscinski's books are a genre of their own. Here is a compelling marriage of factual reportage and literary sensibility. The results are astounding and deeply felt. I marvel at how he weaves the histories of Iran into the the tense and violent moments leading up to the revolution. I'm in awe,
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really. Who else wrote or now writes like this? Who??? Show Less
LibraryThing member theonearmedcrab
With “Shah of Shahs” (1985), Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski paint a poignant portrait of Iranian society in the final years of the Shah, Mohammed Reza, and its dictatorial rule. How army, police and especially the secret service Savak act with impunity, how ordinary Iranians increasingly
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fear potential informers in their own surroundings, or just random arrest. How oil billions are squandered, on ill-thought through attempts to create the Great Civilization whilst it is mostly foreign companies and the corrupt Iranian elite that benefit. How society is ultimately ready to accept, no, to desperately welcome any kind of revolution, including the one of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Show Less
LibraryThing member irisiris
Iran circa 1980, seen from the center of a whirlwind of memories, lies and scraps of paper. Even a novice reader becomes an insider with R. Kapuscinski's guidance
LibraryThing member bridgitshearth
Maybe the critic fingers the power of Ryszard Kapucinski's work: too much of a fabulist to be a good journalist. The Pole's account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 resonates in these post-Mubarak times of excitement and uncertainty. The Shah and his people are representative of the 27 revolutions
In my mind, this book rates a place on the reading list of many a poli-sci class as an antidote to the tidy niceties of what during my college years passed for political science with its study of the pre-1990's twentieth century paradigm of fascism, communism, democracy. Only time will tell whether the current episodes in the Middle East deserve an epilogue to Kapuscinski's informed observations....
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he says he's seen in his years as a journalist and there is much insight given to the dynamics of revolutionary times and the outcomes of cataclysmic events. Kapuscinski sustains the reader by alternating his more philosophic passages with sometimes funny and sometimes excruciating vignettes of the various characters, of lives of the known and the nameless, of events great and small.In my mind, this book rates a place on the reading list of many a poli-sci class as an antidote to the tidy niceties of what during my college years passed for political science with its study of the pre-1990's twentieth century paradigm of fascism, communism, democracy. Only time will tell whether the current episodes in the Middle East deserve an epilogue to Kapuscinski's informed observations....
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LibraryThing member untraveller
Excellent book! Thought-provoking and memory-inducing!!!
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
The fall of the Shah of Iran. A short book, but punchy and very, very clever.
LibraryThing member breic
Kapuscinski gives a lot of atmosphere of Iran leading up to the revolution. I didn't learn much, in the way of facts, but got a feeling of the country through Kapuscinski's quick sketches and anecdotes. Kapuscinski unfortunately likes to digress into light philosophy, for example giving his
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feelings of why revolutions happen. This is less than convincing, especially when he rather transparently puts it into the words of an Iranian character he is allegedly interviewing. Not a huge fan. Show Less
LibraryThing member jonfaith
The source material was familiar. Robert Fisk afforded a harrowing account of the SAVAK and their grip on the people of Iran. Kapuściński couches the revolutionary groundwell in almost poetic terms. The Shah's callous myopia is presented with aplomb. This torrent of elements is conveyed within
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the jagged continuity of its time. And with success, I hasten to add. Show Less
LibraryThing member heggiep
Insightful and damning, yet slightly nuanced. Surprising, given the descriptions of a people brutalized and numb, that it could have been published in 1982 communist Poland.
LibraryThing member Jazz1987
I found Ryszard Kapuscinski a good writer and wished more modern journalist would sound like him in being unbiased on foreign affairs. This book is essentailly about the Iranianian Revoultion and the three men who shaped it: Mohammad Reza Shah, Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini, and briefly Prime
In, my option, have same with no royal background, like the Shah's father, all of the sudden become a royal strongman is a gamble (similar on how we should view Napoleon). Did they make the nation, in which they are sovereign, a better place or did they do it for personal gain? Money? Power? Land? Connections?
However, a nation ruled by a religious head is not great either. Iran may have a president but it's quite obvious even in the book that the ayatollah has control and it's a "republic" only in name. Keep in mind Kapuscinski comes from Poland where in his time it was a Communist puppet-state to the Soviet Union and hadn't yet tasted actual freedom for nearly 100 years.
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Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Kapuscinski does a good job, from personal experience, what Iran was like in the late 1970's. It went from a tyrant monarchy (who was more interested in Westernizing than fixing problems) to a nation where the religion is not separate from the state. So it leaves you wondering what the purpose of the revolution was?In, my option, have same with no royal background, like the Shah's father, all of the sudden become a royal strongman is a gamble (similar on how we should view Napoleon). Did they make the nation, in which they are sovereign, a better place or did they do it for personal gain? Money? Power? Land? Connections?
However, a nation ruled by a religious head is not great either. Iran may have a president but it's quite obvious even in the book that the ayatollah has control and it's a "republic" only in name. Keep in mind Kapuscinski comes from Poland where in his time it was a Communist puppet-state to the Soviet Union and hadn't yet tasted actual freedom for nearly 100 years.
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Awards
Notable Books List (1985)
Guardian 100 Greatest Non-Fiction (History)
Pages
160
ISBN
0679738010 / 9780679738015