Strange Times, My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature by Nahid (edt) Mozaffari Reviewed by Christopher Hitchens
The Atlantic Monthly
"In The Captive Mind, his brilliantly lucid reflection on totalitarianism and its temptations, Czeslaw Milosz devoted most of his essays to the problem of communism and the intellectuals. In one chapter, however, he turned aside to view another manifestation of tyranny, and also to examine the verbal and literary means by which it could be thwarted. The essay is called 'Ketman.' The term was first introduced to the West by Arthur de Gobineau, a rather sinister ethnologist who in the mid-nineteenth century served two tours as a French diplomat in Tehran." Read the entire Atlantic Monthly review.