Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
A lively and erudite account of Persophilia…Whenever Dabashi
discusses particular writers, Iranian or Western, his enthusiasm
brims over; his love for literature, whether in Persian or English,
German or French, shines through and animates his prose…His astute
capsule descriptions of 19th- and 20th-century Iranian writers,
most of whom remain unknown in the West, will come as both
provocative and enlightening to even the most jaded Persophile.
*Literary Review*
Generates new ways of thinking about global culture that do away
with tired dichotomies such as East and West, center and periphery,
and tradition and modernity…[An] urgent and impressive
accomplishment.
*Critical Inquiry*
A work of quietly revolutionary insight. By following the work of
Persian art and literature not only out of its original courtly
environment and into conflict and often collusion with the West,
Dabashi adds a much-needed undercurrent to the entire school of
thought that originated with Said’s Orientalism.
*The National*
New insight into the way Europeans conceived of and shaped
representations of Persian literature, culture, and
aesthetics…Provides us with a Persian counterpart to Edward Said’s
Orientalism…An ambitious text that by its very nature will spark
debate amongst scholars specializing in the innumerable fields it
discusses.
*Canadian Review of Comparative Literature*
Hamid Dabashi tells an elegant and startling story about the
significance of Persian culture in Western society, and how Western
ideas about Persian culture shaped modern Iran’s notions of its
antiquity and literary history.
*Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania*
Hamid Dabashi’s scholarly investigation into Persophilia—the
attraction that Iran’s literary humanism held for giants of
European culture including Mozart, Goethe, and Nietzsche—turns
simplistic views of ‘Orientalism’ upside down. His penetrating
account of a global conversation lasting centuries forces us to
rethink tired old clichés about European cultural hegemony.
*Malise Ruthven, author of Islam in the World*
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