The beautifully written travel memoir of a Western woman's journey in Iran In the tradition of Nothing to Declare, Honeymoon in Purdah is a book of sketches gathered over the course of one woman's journey in Iran. Through her, we meet the ordinary and extraordinary people of Iran--men and women whose lives extend beyond Western news stories of of kidnappings, terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism. Peppered with accounts of Iran's Islamic Revolution and political analyses of the country, Honeymoon in Purdah is a departure from our conventional perception of Iran. Alison Wearing give Iranians the chance to wander beyond headlines and stereotypes and in so doing, reveals the poetry of their lives.

Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey

Biographies & Memoirs

Wearing, Alison

Community & Culture

Picador

The beautifully written travel memoir of a Western woman's journey in Iran.
With a love of travel, Alison Wearing invites us to journey with her to Iran--a country that few Westerners have a chance to see. Traveling with a male friend, in the guise of a couple on their honeymoon, Wearing set out on her own at every available opportunity. She went looking for what lay beneath the media's representation of Iran and found a country made up of welcoming, curious, warmhearted, ambitious men and women. 
With humor and compassion, Wearing gives Iranians the chance to wander beyond headlines and stereotypes, and in doing so, reveals the poetry of their lives--those whose lives extend beyond Western news stories of kidnapping, terrorism, veiled women, and Islamic fundamentalism.
"With this engrossing account, Wearing casts a sympathetic eye on the real people of Iran, so often invisible to the West."--Publishers Weekly

History

Middle East

Honeymoon in Purdah : An Iranian Journey

Sports & Outdoors

PAN BOOKS LTD (ENGLAND)

HONEYMOON IN PURDAH: AN IRANIAN JOURNEY

Travel

Asia

Macmillan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER (The Globe and Mail) Finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction [2014] Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize [2014] A moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario—especially to his wife and three children. Alison’s father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe’s internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe’s private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada. Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is also the story of “coming out” as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent’s search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly “went in,” concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the “great straight things” they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide. Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life’s great lessons in love. Alison brings her story to life with a skillfully light touch in this warm, heartfelt and revelatory memoir.

Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad

Knopf Canada

Alison Wearing went on a trip beyond the legacy of revolution, religious fundamentalism and veiled women to find the real people of Iran. Posing as a honeymooner, but accidentally on purpose setting out on her own at every opportunity, Alison Wearing reveals an irresistible curiosity at every turn. With a novelist's love of language and an eye for dramatic detail, she takes the reader into the homes and hearts of the people who welcome her, feed her, and send her off on one adventure after the other.Alison goes to hidden places of interest that recall the romance of Persia, on interminable trips into the desert, and to fading palaces by the sea - wherever she finds herself, she offers startling insights into daily life in Iran, an enigmatic country. "Honeymoon in Purdah" is beautifully written, fresh and fascinating at every turn, and is a glorious account of a hardcore holiday. "We are presented with the view from behind a pair of hungry, sensitive and wholly human eyes - a vivid and endearing picture of Iran's people" - "Independent on Sunday".

Travel Writing

To go beyond the legacy of revolution, religious fundamentalism and veiled women and find the real people of Iran, a young Canadian dons the cloak of Islam. The result of Alison Wearing's journey is a warm, funny and shocking collection of riveting portraits and stories about the generous, irrepressible people she met. With a novelist's love of language and eye for detail, she takes the reader into the homes and hearts of people whose spirit, intelligence and laughter enlighten and impress. Beautifully written, engaging, fascinating at every turn, Honeymoon in Purdah reveals an Iran rarely seen by Westerners and leads this exceptional bestselling young writer across new literary borders.

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Product Description 
Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir about a daughter’s evolving relationship with her aging father, the small moments we share, and the hunt for roots and belonging. The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest ― any at all ― in genealogy. Very quickly, the father-daughter pilgrimage becomes more comical than fruitful, more of a bittersweet adventure than a studious mission. And rather than rigorous genealogy, their explorations move into the realm of family and forgiveness, the primal search for identity and belonging, and questions about responsibility to our ancestors and the extent to which we are shaped by the people who came before us. Though continually bursting with humor, Moments of Glad Grace is a story about identity, history, and ultimately becomes a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents. “A richly layered journey, charmingly told.” ― Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything 
 Review 
“Moments of Glad Grace is an endearing delight.” ― Shelf Awareness\n“This is a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence. It’s about a daughter and her ageing father, it’s about genealogy and identity, it’s about Ireland, but actually it’s about how we love the ones we love. Moments of Glad Grace is a travelogue of the heart. It’s a road you’ll want to travel.” ― Yann Martel, #1 bestselling author of Life of Pi\n“This is a well written book that celebrates love and maturity, wisdom and forgiveness, and the hard earned peace that occurs when you have the courage to pass through heartfelt honesty to the other side of tragedy, loss and sorrow. Highly recommended.” ― Vancouver Sun\n“A richly layered journey, charmingly told.” ― Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything\n“Dancing between hilarity and the poignancy of a last sojourn with her father, Alison Wearing once again reveals herself as a sharp and tender observer of this mortal coil we call life. Moments of Glad Grace is a journey you won’t want to miss.” ― Merilyn Simonds, author of Refuge 
 About the Author 
Alison Wearing is the bestselling author of Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter, an Indigo Top 50 pick shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Prize and longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. She teaches, performs solo multimedia plays, and leads writing workshops internationally. 
 Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 
The customs officer has the face of a merry alcoholic who also enjoys his pie. His friendly eyes flutter when I tell him the purpose of my trip―to help my father with some gynaecological research―but he doesn’t ask any further questions. Just stamps my passport and says Welcome to Ireland, love, which feels like a moment of sanity in an otherwise crazed world. I have come here to help my father with some genealogical research. He’s quite serious about it and has been at it for years, but a few months ago he mentioned a desire to revisit Dublin’s libraries and archives, adding that he would prefer to do it with the help of a research assistant. Count me in! I’d said immediately, though we both knew I fall asleep at the mere mention of genealogy, a word I am forever confusing with gynaecology, particularly when saying it aloud. Still, we’re here. And a bit of boredom in the archives seems a small price to pay for the chance to spend ten days in Dublin with my dad. He’ll be eighty in a few months―he’d say he’s 79½―and is so fit and active I have wondered if I’ll be the one scrambling to keep up. But he also has incipient Parkinson’s, a disease that has begun to possess and hammer him, and I jumped at

Moments of Glad Grace: A Memoir

Parenting & Relationships

Aging Parents

ECW Press

Meine iranische Reise

Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH

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