Passenger To Teheran

Passenger To Teheran

In 1926 Vita Sackville-West travelled to Iran to visit her husband, Harold Nicolson, who was serving as a diplomat in Teheran. Her route was deliberately slow-paced - she stopped in Egypt, where she sailed up the Nile to Luxor; and India, where she visited New Delhi and Agra before sailing across the Persian Gulf to Iraq and on through bandit-infested mountains to Teheran. She returned to England in an equally circuitous manner and despite travelling under dangerous circumstances, through communist Russia and Poland in the midst of revolution, her humour and sense of adventure never failed.Passenger to Teheran is a classic work, revealing the lesser-known side of one of the twentieth century's most luminous authors.From Publishers WeeklyBloomsbury writer Sackville-West's lively intelligence and independence of spirit animate this glittering jewel of a book. A travelogue of her circuitous, four-month journey to Iran (then Persia) via Egypt, Aden, India and Iraq, it is notable for the author's open-mindedness and her empathy for the diverse peoples she encountered--whether potters in an Egyptian village, Arab women by the Tigris or Kurdish farmers. Teheran, where her husband Harold Nicolson was stationed as a British diplomat, seemed "a squalid city of bad roads, rubbish heaps and pariah dogs," yet the Persia she conjures up is full of life for those who unnecessary. it's implied. aa seek it. Here is Sackville-West the adventurer, philosopher of travel just 'philosopher', or 'on travel'? aa/leave as is.gs , humorist, word-painteror 'word smith'?aa/leave as is.gs and political satirist (of Iran under the shahs, and of the fledging Soviet Union, glimpsed on her return trek). Originally published in 1926 and long out of print, this memoir includes 65 photographs and a new introduction in which Nigel Nicolson, the author's son, adds key personal details omitted by his motheror call her 'Sackville-West'.aa .Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library JournalSixty-five years ago, Sackville-West traveled by train, ship, and motorcar from London to Persia to visit her diplomat husband Harold Nicolson. A member of the literary Bloomsbury Group and close friend of Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West is described in the introduction by her son Nigel as "a born traveller, with that rare capacity to love equally" her home and the place she visits. She wrote as she traveled, so the narrative imparts her sense of wonder. Her writing shows deep reflection and brilliant style. This work, while not one of her best, is a lyrical period piece which contains passages of unquestionable beauty about places like Isfahan and Baghdad. There are 65 photographs from the author's private library. For travel or academic libraries who do not own the first edition (1926. o.p.).-Susan Fifer Canby, National Geographic Soc . Lib., Washington, D.C.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.ReviewThe best travel books are personal accounts, and no one limns the acutely personal as does Vita SackvilleWest. This is her account of a long journey in 1926 from Kent in England to the British Embassy and her husband Harold Nicolson in Teheran. "Rushing" by train through France and northern Italy, she deplores the loss of that leisured contemplative "recurring to the expected end of his journey" enjoyed by travelers of an earlier time. By boat to Aden and across an endless Indian Ocean, she reflects on those black holes of existence that fall in between time zones: the very compression of time itself. Briefly in India, she frets over her "shallowness," knowing she does not see what she chooses not to see, yet leaves it without regret. On then through a placid, opalescent Persian Gulf; by train to Baghdad. Heedless of the dire warnings of officialdom, she joins the diplomatic mail-run by motor caravan from Baghdad across the deserts of Iraq, on through treacherous mountain passes of what is now Iran. Curious, ex