Book Board Chat

Iran’s Bestseller

Which author sells the most books around Tehran. Everyone seems to want a copy. It's not Ahmadinejad. It's not the Ayatollah. It's Gabriel García Márquez who hasn't published a book in years. But back in 1996 he wrote News Of A Kidnapping. [Paperback: ISBN-10: 0140267832]. Iranian bookstores are sold out. You might be able to find a bootlegged version for three times the cover price. What in the world is going on? Mir Hossein Moussavi is an opposition leader here. He's been under house arrest since February. In a recent meeting he compared his detention to Márquez's account of abductions by a drug cartel in Colombia. The word spread. And just like that, News Of A Kidnapping went viral.

Hundreds of activists, journalists and students have been imprisoned in Iran for taking part in demonstrations since 2009. More than 200 executions have been announced this year. Barring China, no other country metes out the death penalty more often. So why aren't we seeing any pushback? After all, it's the year of the Arab Spring. Where are Iran's famous protesters? The Iranian regime has learned its lesson in 2009. Now it crushes the first signs of dissent and it won't let hundreds of people gather in public places.

But the likes of Libya and Syria tried that too. What's different here is that Iranians are not Arabs. They're a great civilization with a political system that seems to have failed its people. Iran arouses suspicion in the region and around the world. Iran is subject to the most stringent international sanctions. There is clearly suppression and discontent, but even if Iranians were to revolt once more - what is it they want instead? They are wary of revolution. What is the alternative? And will it be any better? There's isn't a simple answer.

Clearly some Iranians support this regime for reasons of religious loyalty and belief and because of tangible material rewards. Others fear it. And still others are waiting for the opportunity to reform or even replace it. The people who can read Márquez are surely a signs of a county where people are gasping for freedom.

Tehran's unlikely bestseller

From Library Journal

Garcia Marquez, Latin America's Nobel prize-winning novelist, turned his hand for the first time to nonfiction to explain the widespread kidnapping in Colombia. The author captures the political intricacies and strange, deep involvement of drug dealers in Colombian life, turning what as easily could have been an imagined story into a fascinating exploration of contemporary culture, politics, and drug lords.

From The New York Times

The cocaine boom was born sometime in the 1970's, by Carlos Rivas, a former automobile parts smuggler. He took to importing cocaine, and, using the old methods of smuggling emeralds or orchids, he grew vastly rich. The rest is very bad history. Before long a number of cartels were exporting refined cocaine to the USA. The original cartel operated out of Medellin. There were others, one based in Cali and one in the capital, Bogota.

American pressure put the Columbia authorities in a very difficult situation. Let us imagine that we have a President who carries five bullets in his body as the result of an assassination attempt. Let us imagine that Lady Bird Johnson and Amy Carter have both spent time in the hands of kidnappers, living on tortillas, in fear of their lives.. Two popular Attorneys General, have been gunned down, as has several heads of the FBI and the DEA, as well as numerous Congressmen and Senators. All over the country, prosecutors and judges are being offered the choice of being rich or dead. This is the situation underlying the story that Marquez, tells in his nonfiction book. The object of these kidnappings was to pressure the Government from sending drug lords to the prisons that awaited them in the USA. The drug bosses were on the receiving end of a few kidnappings themselves, carried out by rebel groups like the M-19. The cartels dealt with them by forming a Death to Kidnappers organization. And by a series of murders and tortures, they discouraged the practice by their enemies. And the dignity of their office did not prevent the police from employing brutal and fatal methods in their treatment of those associated with the cocaine distribution.

Marquez wrote ''News of a Kidnapping'' to document the suffering bravely endured and to alert the world to Colombia's crises. Mr. Marquez is a former journalist, and his book resembles good newspaper journalism, with a quick eye for the illuminating detail and facts. The horrors and absurdities, the touches of tender humanity and the stony cruelty are all part of this story. Both the head of Colombia's Department for Security, and cartel leader Pablo Escobar, were trying to kill each other. Both believed they owed the preservation of their lives to the Holy Infant of Prague. This inflicted a woeful conflict of interest on the tiny Savior. Other kidnappers almost come to blows over their respective opinions of the Pope. In keeping with his role as objective journalist, Mr. Garcia Marquez makes very little comment on these and other conditions that underlie the intense pathology he describes.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/970615.15stonet.html