We are Iran - Tapa blanda

A unique composite picture of what it's really like to live, work, love and blog in Iran 'This is not the first example of a book made out of blogs... It does, I think, count as the finest so far: an eye-opening collage of extracts from the (roughly) 64,000 Farsi-language bloggers now at work in Iran, threaded by Alavi's illuminating analysis.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Incredibly heartening' Ian Hislop, 'Start the Week', BBC R4 'Every now and again a book comes along that first challenges any preconceived notions you may have about a particular subject, and then turns them completely on their head. We Are Iran is just such a book.' Metro 'This could very well be the nearest thing to a nation writing its own history.' Scotsman 'You won't get a better glimpse of the obsessions and frustrations that exist behind the imposed cliche of the black chador; ideas and passions that thrive despite the rule of what Alavi calls the mutant IslamistsA".' Christopher Dickey, Newsweek 'An eye-opening patchwork of Iranian voices - It would be hard to read We Are Iran without sensing you had glimpsed the affairs of ordinary people living in a cruelly restrictive regime.' Rosemary Goring, Herald 'The blogs are admirably articulate, brave, heartfelt, funny and sad.' New Statesman

WE ARE IRAN is a seamlessly edited multi-voiced portrait of contemporary Iran, translated from Farsi, using that nation's weblogs as its primary source. Iran has more web diarists than most countries, and in cyberspace many Iranians find a freedom to express opinions that is not available to them in print. Theirs is not the Iran of bearded ayatollahs and thuggish militias, but a country that has educated itself to the point where it finds the Islamist fundamentalists antiquated and laughable, where adult literacy (and computer literacy) is higher than in many European states, and where 70 per cent of the population is under 30 and keen to usher in a new Iran. Their voices - infused with Persian lyricism - are refreshing, utterly at odds with the grim vision of the country peddled by Western governments. They talk of their conflicts with the law, the condition of women, of repression and its subversion, the police and media, of singing and dancing, of snatched romance and nostalgia for lost heroes. Reading WE ARE IRAN, you have the sense that, for more reasons than are obvious, the worst thing that could possibly happen to Iran now would be a US attack...