Hooman Majd, Hooman Majd

Minister Without Portfolio (eBook, ePUB)

Memoir of a Reluctant Exile

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ comes a globe-spanning memoir of identity, exile, and reinvention.

In many ways, Hooman Majd has led a charmed life: the son of a high-ranking diplomat in pre-Revolutionary Iran, he grew up in the upper echelons of Iranian society and in cosmopolitan diplomatic enclaves in San Francisco, London, and Washington, DC. As a young man, after Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution in 1979, Majd sold real estate to fellow Iranian exiles in Beverly Hills, tried his hand at writing, and found his way into the orbit of Chris Blackwell, the impresario of Island Records and mastermind behind the careers of Bob Marley & the Wailers, U2, and other global superstars. After rising through the ranksand sometimes, but not always, the chartsMajd went on to write three influential books about his homeland and served as a consultant and contributor to NBC News on Iran. Yet, for all this authority and access, Majd could never truly call any place home.

As he recounts in his open-hearted memoir Minister without Portfolionamed for the tongue-in-cheek title Blackwell bestowed on himHooman Majd has always been shadowed by a sense of precarity, even as he bantered with ambassadors' wives at smoke-filled soirees or traded gossip with Grace Jones and Dennis Hopper at Goldeneye, Blackwell's Jamaican estate and the former home of Ian Fleming. Majd had seen first-hand the havoc wrought on his familyand so many othersby the Iranian revolution. All his life, he has been questioned, frisked, or even threatened at points of entry. Though he has risked several return trips to Iran, today, officially, he can never go back. How can you build an identity when no place will claim you as its own?

Told with grace, insight, and longingand filled with riotous, sometimes shocking portraits of larger-than-life personalities and illuminating insights about the entanglements between Iran and the WestMinister without Portfolio is a trenchant memoir of belonging nowhere and everywhere at once.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: The Unnamed Press
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. September 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798988670070
• Artikelnr.: 76118788

Autorenporträt

Hooman Majd is an author and writer based in New York, and a contributor at NBC News. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, TIME, Newsweek, Financial Times, and Interview, among others. Majd is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (Doubleday, 2008) and The Ayatollahs' Democracy (Norton, 2010). His most recent book on Iran, The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, was published by Doubleday in 2013. Majd has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Charlie Rose, NBC News, and many others, and on numerous NPR programs.

Inhaltsangabe

Author’s
Note                                                                         
1.         Flight
2.         Coming to America
3.         Home, Part One
4.         Eastward and Westward
5.         London, Redux
6.         Anglo-American-Iranian
7.         Back to America
8.         Tehran on the Potomac
9.         Ambitions
10.       Revolution
11.       The End of a Career
12.       Exile
13.       California
14.       “Beverly Hills, Where Rich People Live”
15.       A Third Life
16.       Passports & Polygram
17.       The Jamaicans
18.       On Leave
19.       Back to Island
20.       Successes (And Almost)
21.       A Third Island Records
22.       The Irish
23.       Impending Clouds
24.       The Iran Connection
25.       Turmoil
26.       Palm Pictures
27.       Another Chapter Begins
28.       September
29.       Life in Slow Motion
30.       Encounters with Officialdom
31.       Back in Los Angeles
32.       Going Home
33.       Another Career
34.       The Voice of Iran
35.       The Persians
36.       Again in Iran
37.       NBC News
38.       The Aftermath
39.       The Ann Curry Unit
40.       Nuclear Talks Begin
41.       Iran Talks, Part Two
42.       NBC, Continued
43.       Back to Jamaica
44.       Losing Childhood
45.       Americans in Iran
46.       Home, Revisited
Acknowledgments
About the Author