Author to discuss new book about United States’ ‘misunderstod enemy’

Author to discuss new book about United States’ ‘misunderstod enemy’

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

A look at Iran
from behind closed doors will be presented at Rice University
by New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino Oct. 20.

“Iran is
one of America’s last enemies on earth and a country
misunderstood by Americans,” said Sciolino, who will
discuss her new book, “Persian Mirrors: The Elusive
Face of Iran,” at 6 p.m. at Rice’s James A. Baker
III Institute for Public Policy. She will sign copies of
her book from 7 to 7:30 p.m. Rice students, faculty and
staff are welcome to attend.

Sciolino, a
senior writer in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The New
York Times, began her journalism career reporting for Newsweek.
One of the first female foreign correspondents assigned
to the guarded, male-ruled world of the Islamic Republic,
she has covered Iran since the 1979 revolution. Sciolino
was there for the seizure of the American Embassy, the Iran-Iraq
war and the riots of the summer of 1999. She has interviewed
such key Iranian leaders as Ayatollah Khomeini and President
Mohammad Khatami.

In “Persian
Mirrors,” Sciolino takes the reader into the public
and private spaces of Iran—the bazaars, beauty salons,
courtrooms, wedding receptions, aerobics studios, the homes
of ayatollahs and the presidential palace.

“This is
primarily a book about people,” she said. “No
other country I have visited has seduced me the way Iran
has. It is one of the most dynamic and exciting countries
in the world, filled with surprises and complexity, sometimes
even poetry and magic. What brought me back time and again
was not a story about politics or religion, but a drama
about human nature.”