The Critics: Jason Elliot’s ‘Mirrors of the Unseen’

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  10.30.06 | 2:49 PM ET

imageThe New York Times on Sunday critiqued Jason Elliot’s memoir of his travels in Iran, Mirrors of the Unseen, giving the book a mixed review. “Elliot is never less than forthright, and some of his architectural descriptions are very fine,” writes Christopher de Bellaigue. “As a traveling companion, however, he can be less than engaging. He gives us only glimpses of the self-awareness that makes the banal details of being in a foreign place — the mutual incomprehension, the periods of inert, enforced reflection, the brief encounters — so revealing, both of a traveler and his environment.”

In a review earlier this year in the Guardian, Sara Wheeler wrote that Elliot “deploys a guileful blend of traveller’s tales, topographical description and history—spiced up with a treatise on the meaning of Islamic art—to guide the reader towards an understanding of what that ancient country is, and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not.”

Meanwhile, the Independent called the book “a perfect antidote to the current image of Iran in the West.”

Tags: Middle East, Iran


1 Comment for The Critics: Jason Elliot’s ‘Mirrors of the Unseen’

Michael McKinley 06.29.07 | 2:49 AM ET

I’ve just started reading Mirrors of the Unseen and so far I am impressed.  I spent three weeks in Iran in 2006; reading Mr. Elliot’s descriptions take me back as if I was standing in the bazar all over again.  I am looking forward to completing this yarn.

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