Shah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete failure. Yet even as Iran becomes a 'behemoth of riches' and as the Shah lives like a European billionaire, its people live in a climate of fear, terrorized by the secret police. Told with intense power and feeling, Kapuscinski portrays the inevitable build-up to revolution - a cataclysmic upheaval that delivered Iran into the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran, 1980: the revolutionaries have taken charge. In a deserted Teheran hotel, Ry-szard Kapuscinski tries to make journalistic and human sense out of the mass of notes, tapes, and photographs he has accumulated during his extended stay in Iran. Just what happened and how? What did Khomeini have to offer that the Shah, who promised to 'create a second America within a generation,' did not? Where did the revolution come from, and where is it going? After all this blood has been spilled, what has it given its people or the world? 'We have given the world poetry, miniatures, carpets,' says a rug merchant in Teheran. 'We have given the world this miraculous, unique use-lessness.' Kapuscinski tells a rich story that combines factual reporting with his own impressions and reflections. Always engrossing and frequently revelatory, it is a unique portrait of the psychological state of a country in revolution The Noted Polish Foreign Correspondent Combines Factual Reportage And First-hand Impressions To Build A Reflective Account Of The Shah Of Iran, His Final Weeks In Power, And The Revolution That Sent Him Into Exile. Ryszard Kapuściński ; Translated From The Polish By William R. Brand And Katarzyna Mroczkowska-brand. Translation Of: Szachinszach. Depicting the final years of the Shah in Iran, this book offers a meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. It describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power
