Virtual Book Chat Reminder -- A Bitter Veil

Acckk... It's almost here!


On Tuesday, April 17, at 6 PM (Eastern time so plan accordingly), Libby Hellmann will be talking about A BITTER VEIL, the state of publishing, and anything else that's on your mind during a 45-minute video chat online!


Shindig Events is a brand new service that allows up to 500 people to interact together. And it is so easy to use that even her 92 year old mother will be there. All you do is go to this website. That's it! You'll be able to ask questions, watch a slide presentation (don't worry—it's short) and even chat among yourselves. So please kick back and join her online.


RSVP here to get a same day reminder or just come on over.


Libby hopes to "see" you there.

Once Upon a Time in Iran

by Libby Hellmann

Not long ago I went to a high school reunion and talked to a classmate I hadn’t kept up with since graduation. She was one of those people you're not friends with, but you aren't enemies; we just traveled in different circles. For some reason (maybe because I was published, maybe not) she came up to me and said she wanted to tell me her story. Naturally I said sure and grabbed a glass of wine. We sat down in a corner.

From high school she went on to college where she became an activist against the Vietnam war. A few years later she met a young Iranian man who was studying in the US. They fell in love, she married him, and they moved to Tehran. There was only one problem. It was 1978, and within a year, the Islamic revolution shattered their world. She observed first-hand the optimism and hope that first accompanied the fall of the Shah, the gradual realization that the freedom and democracy Iranians had hoped for wasn’t coming, the rise of fundamental Islam, the oppressive dictates of Sharia law.

As a sophisticated young woman raised in America, she especially chafed at the restrictions on women. After a while, she found the situation intolerable and begged her husband to let her go home. He refused. And since a woman needs her husband’s permission to legally leave the country, she became a virtual prisoner. Ultimately, she couldn’t even leave the house without his permission.

Somehow she managed to get herself smuggled out of Iran and into Turkey where she eventually made her way back to the US. In some ways, her story is similar to Not Without My Daughter but in her case there were no children involved.

End of story, right?

No. Last fall I’d just finished DOUBLEBACK and was casting around for my next book. My former classmate’s story -- and the issues it raised kept picking at me: a powerless woman, an epic revolution, international politics, and conflict in all sorts of permutations – it wove a powerful spell. I couldn’t resist, so I fictionalized her story, added a murder, and started to write.


I’m just about half way through, and the recent post-election events in Iran have mesmerized me. I’ve been following them on Twitter (btw, Marcus, Twitter has more than proved itself in my mind). In fact, I feel as if I’ve stepped into a time warp. The revolution 30 years ago was extensively covered and written, and there's a wealth of information-- and novels -- about it, but seeing the passion of today’s protestors is unsettling. We all know what happened after the protests then, and it seems to be happening again.


I am in touch with several Iranians who now live in the US. As you might expect, their reactions have been cautious, even jaded. Most feel that because the power is now disbursed among the mullahs, not concentrated as it was under the Shah, any real hope of change is illusory. At the same time, the mullahs are divided --some champion reform, some don't. So, underneath the cynicism, I sense a kernel of hope. How can there not be? The cycle has begun again, and even if nothing happens immediately, it’s clear that the repressive nature of Islamic fundamentalism is fraying.

For the sake of my Iranian friends, as well as everyone involved in today’s post-election protests, I continue to watch and hope for a happy ending. Meanwhile, I'm going back to finish my classmate's story.






Btw, if anyone wants to know what life in Iran was like just before the fall of the Shah, I highly recommend ROOFTOPS OF TEHRAN by Mahbod Seraji. It’s a compelling story, and beautifully written. We’ll be hearing a lot more from Seraji.

Enough from me... what do you think about it all?

The 4th of July

July 4. An emotional holiday for most Americans, stirring lots of different emotions. In my family, it was the one holiday where my parents didn’t fight. My father would recount for us the history of the Revolutionary War, my mother would make the custard for ice cream; we’d all take part in freezing it in the hand-turned ice cream maker, and we’d have a picnic supper with family and friends. We’d listen to my folks’ old 78’s of Paul Robeson singing “” and then set off fireworks.

These days, it’s harder to feel celebratory. The Supremes have decided that the only part of the Bill of Rights worth keeping and expanding is the 2nd Amendment. Yes! We can all carry handguns! We can create the armed state so many Americans have dreamed of for so long. Our rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unwarranted search, our rights to privacy and equal protection under the laws are sorely diminished, but I guess we can all now shoot our way out of trouble.

And speaking of shooting our way out of trouble, with oil markets in turmoil, with the economy tanking, with 60,000 Iraqi soldiers dead or wounded and 30,000 U.S. soldiers in the same sad state, with the military unable to meet recruitment targets except by admitting gang members and the functionally illiterate, the U.S. is once more on the brink of war with Iran.

A year ago, Dick Cheney wanted desperately to start bombing Iran, but the Joint Chiefs told him the U.S. didn’t have the resources to carry on the war that would ensue. Now, he’s rattling the cage again. When Congress gets back from its July 4 recess, members will vote on Joint Resolution 362, urging Bush to use all means to stop Iran from doing whatever it’s doing. Iran may be a worrying Middle East threat, but do we really want to blow up the whole Middle East and our own people and economy in the process? Give it some thought. If you want to phone or fax your representative, this handy website gives their names and numbers.

Have a happy 4th. Eat ice cream. Enjoy your gun. Don’t say anything on the phone you don’t want Cheney to hear.

Sara Paretsky

What Can One Person Do, Anyway?

BY SARA PARETSKY

I went to the Frankfurt book fair this year. It's the oldest book fair in the world, goes back to around 1200, when books were written by hand, and now it's the biggest scrum on the planet. Living in Chicago, I'm used to McCormick Place, but the Buchmesse buildings could swallow McCormick Place and come back for seconds.

There are 400,000 books on display at the fair, ranging from Ich Nicht to A History of Heat Transfer, and they cheered me up and depressed me at the same time--depressed me because when you see so much in print, you think, why bother adding to the heap? What is your little ant-like voice trying to accomplish, anyway. But they cheered me because they gave me the illusion that the book is a robust "delivery vehicle" for stories and ideas, despite people getting Jane Austen on their Blackberries.

I met book wholesalers from around the world, and they, too, are in love with the word on the page. I learned that in India and South Africa, English continues to be an important language of literature, but that in Lebanon, it's French. Lebanon has its own big book fair every fall; it takes place just about now, and the French writers who come are crucial for the fair's success. Two weeks ago the French government withdrew all French writers from the fair. They think it is all too likely that the U.S. will start bombing Iran at any moment and if that's the case, no one in the Middle East will be safe.

The Lebanese wholesaler was distraught. She has already lost a grandmother and a brother in the bombings of the last decades, from Israel, from Hamas, from Syria. "You don't know what it's like, to be lying in a cellar, not knowing where your family is, not knowing if you'll have a home to return to when the bombs stop falling," she said, and she's right. "You don't know what it feels like, the uncertainty, not knowing if each day you can live your life, or if the planes and the bombs will come again."

She challenged me to find a way to stop the madness, stop my country from dropping more bombs, this time on Iran. I wish I could. I've called the White House and sent my e-mails to Senators and to Dick Cheney. Tell me what else I can do to stop them.

By the way, Ich Nicht is the memoir of the Fest family, who own Frankfurt's main newspaper. They stood up to the Nazi regime for twelve years. The book details all the meannesses they suffered as a result, including loss of the newspaper, and the stress on the family for opposing Hitler, but it also shows how one person can stay moral in the midst of insanity. No one in America wants to publish it.

Sara Paretsky
Chicago November 2007