Freelance

Hooman Majd has got a questionable reputation during the so-called Green Movement in Iran, brutally crushed by the regime (similar to what had happened only a couple of weeks ago), when the election of 2009 in Iran was probably rigged and Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “re-elected” for a second term. Author and journalist Majd, frequently writing for mainly US media outlets, was, in particular for the Iranian diaspora, way too apologetic of the regime.

Anyway, I’ve read his two books, The Ayatollahs’ Democracy of 2008, and The Ayatollah Begs to Differ of 2010 with great interest and, well, admiration. I have written about them here and here.

Without doubt, Majd has had an interesting life in the West and East. So, I anticipated his memoir which appeared end of last year, Minister Without Portfolio – Memoir of a Reluctant Exile.

But having finished it, I have to admit that I was wondering who was actually to be addressed, who should read that memoir? The mainly two parts of his book describe his life in the music business as, well, his boss’s, Chris Blackwell’s, minister without portfolio at Island Records and its numerous offshoots in 50 years or so; as well as his second career as author and journalist in and about Iran under the presidents Mohammad Khatami (Majd’s relative by marriage) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I have written about Ahmadinejad’s biography of 2008 by Kasra Naji here.