Kaveh Basmenji
More than two decades after their parents rose up against the Shahâ€™s excesses, increasing numbers of young Iranians are risking jail at the hands of religious paramilitaries roughly their own age, for things their counterparts in the West take for granted: wearing makeup, slow dancing at parties, holding hands with members of the opposite sex. Every day anxious parents queue at courthouses to bail out sons and daughters who have been detained for â€˜moral crimesâ€™.,Kaveh Basmenji, who spent his own youth amidst the turbulence of the Islamic Revolution, argues that Iranâ€™s youth are in near-open revolt for want of greater freedoms, in furious defiance of the ,mullahs, and their brand of sombre religiosity.,Through candid interviews with young people, and in a careful assessment of Iran today (including a special chapter on the implications of the recent election to the presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), Basmenji gets to the heart of the matter: What do Iranâ€™s youth want, and how far are their elders prepared to go to accommodate them?,Kaveh Basmenji, was born in Tehran in 1961, and began working as a journalist at the age of sixteen. He has translated several Western literary works into Persian, and has worked for ,Reuters, and ,The Middle East Times,, amongst others. He has published several collections of essays and poems, and is currently working on his first novel. He lives in Prague.
Cultural,Iran
Tehran Blues: Youth Culture in Iran