This is a travel memoir of a British guy who decided to hitchhike to Iran from France because he hated his job. He nicknames the first Middle Eastern person he meets Saddam, which tells you the type of humor you’ll encounter.
The author turns out to be a stereotypical backpacker who is hanging on to his limited funds in order to see an entire country as cheaply as possible. The trip ends up being framed from the lens of his poverty where we’re exposed to nonstop stories of him negotiating with taxi drivers and hotel clerks. There were also a handful of “I think I got ripped off” anecdotes.
I’m well aware that Iranian people are very generous (if you go into an Iranian home you’ll be offered everything short of a bride), but the Brit takes advantage of that in order to get free stuff from an impoverished people. He justifies it by saying “They’re just so giving!” There was one scene where an Iranian man let him stay at his house, sleep on his bed, and eat his food. The Brit offers no payment, then converts $600 US in front of him at an exchange counter. Immediately after, he goes off to buy lunch for a hippie Swede and his girlfriend who he had earlier made fun of.
I can’t help but see him as a charity case, constantly receiving goods and even money from people. I would be embarrassed to write a book where I accepted money from old people, but he does it without any shame. If your trip is dependent on receiving charity, maybe you should work two months more to increase your bankroll. Or shorten your trip by just a bit.
Besides my dislike for the writer, the story itself is lacking. The characters are not developed. There is no tension. He visits only restaurants that are in his Lonely Planet guidebook. He insists on not having a watch or alarm clock yet he stresses out on if he’ll be on time for trains. There was no real ending either—it simply stopped. His trip in Iran may have been amazing, but this book wasn’t.
Read More: “Iranian Rappers & Persian Porn” on Amazon
taking things from poor devolping peole thats pretty low
title is misleading
Sounds weesh.
Typical Brits. Bunch of whiners.
paranoid bitches
Yep, the author sounds like a lazy jerk.
Was there even any rapping or porn in the book?
Yeah, this sounds pretty lame. I’ve got a great deal of interest in Iran and would love the opportunity this guy had and am going to make it happen as soon as I can. Sounds like a massive arsehole hippie with no understanding of the Persian tarof culture. I’m a Brit too, hope people don’t tar us all with the brush due to wankers like this guy.
*same brush
Excellent review Roosh. I was going to buy this book, but you changed my mind and saved me the money.
Well written review. Thanks
I remember once in first grade, there was a kid who was always so happy even though he didn’t have much. His name was Shawn. He was such a sweet little kid. His mom had left him a year before he had started Kindergarten and left him with his grandmother and great aunts to be raised. I don’t know where his dad was. These women were poor. Really poor. And none of them were able to work due to their advanced age.
I can remember my mom pulling over several times to ask if she could take Shawn the rest of the way to school as the late 70s station wagon that they owned would continually die in morning traffic as they were trying to get Shawn to school. They always declined because they didn’t want to trouble us. I can remember my mom’s heartbreaking because she recognized the poverty these women were trying to raise that little boy in. They were living off a combination of disability and social security checks trying to raise this little boy in a major city in 1990.
One day, picture day in fact, this boy had on his best black jeans and a little black t-shirt because it was picture day and that was all he had. Those were his best clothes. Well before his class’s turn to take pictures, they had recess. My TCU cousin and a few of his 1st grade cronies thought it would be funny to cover over a mud pit with some leaves and try to get Shawn to fall in.
Shawn, the poor boy, didn’t have many friends so when my cousin Brent and his friends called Shawn over, Shawn’s face lit up. Shawn ran towards Brent & The Gang as fast as he could because someone wanted to play with Shawn and of course Shawn fell into the mud pit and got his best little clothes ruined before pictures.
All Shawn could do was break down and cry. There was no noise, no audible sobs, no sniffling. Just tears streaming down his muddy face. He had heavy, burdened tears flowing cutting little rivers into the mud on his cheeks.
Brent and his friends just laughed. They were bent over with laughter, pointing cruelly at that ruined little boy. And Shawn just stood there in the pit, silently crying, trying to understand why an already cruel world had to take such a cold turn against him.
That hurt me in ways that I still don’t fully understand.
To see my cousin and his friends, who even as a boy, I recognized to be wealthy, standing there in fashionable for 1st-grader wear, both biological parents living together, married, good jobs with nothing but decades of raises, new houses and cars when they turned 16 ahead of them, positioned above the sobbing, muddy little boy who had nothing to begin with struck something deep inside of me.
This novel is the equivalent of that awful moment in my personal history. Watching some enriched ass hat trade in on the goodness of the people who do not have nor have access to nearly as much material wealth in a lifetime as what this interloper could earn in a decade enrages me. It makes me want to go out and serve these people, then find the author and give ISIS his address.