Jason Elliot (1) (1965–)

Elliot writes about Afghanistan with a passion that takes you along with him. You can practically smell and see the shops where one can buy shampoo, faux leather watch straps, sticky honey, blank staring heads of goats, army green grenades, prayer carpets, cooking pots, rotting vegetables, astringent medicine, wooly socks, or steel rockets...anything to suit your needs. His mission? To prove to the world that is was possible to travel alone in the places others shunned. (As an aside, what show more does he think of our world now? It is still possible?)
Besides passion, Elliot also writes with lyrical elegance. His statement about time being a river was stunning. It left me pondering my fishing abilities for days. Words like spectral, silent, ghostly, and luminous describe a simple ride through town, but those words also make the journey extra eerie and dangerous. He takes this imagery a step further by adding a touch of royalty by saying they are "kings in the night on our wild chariot" (p 47). It is a romantic image in a dangerous town for Elliot and his companion are out after curfew and could be shot on sight.
Speaking of danger, the section on the diabolical designs of landmines was difficult to read. I cringed as I read about explosives that were made out of plastic so that they would avoid detection by x-ray in a victim's body. Or mines that "jumped in the air to about the height of a man's groin before exploding" to cause a man the most damage and bleed to death...I could go on. My favorite section was when Elliot needed to distract himself from paralyzing fear. He fantasized about riding on the back of a giant fantastical simurgh and seeing with landscape from high above.
Elliot met with people with eyes open; people who supported the Taliban and even defended their actions, pointing out how order has been restored. Perception is truth to most people.
Personal observations: Can you imagine receiving a fax from someone chatting about curtain colors after you have been in the center of incoming tank rounds? It sounds inane.
When Elliot described people ripping off parts of Russian tanks and selling them for scrap I instantly thought of the opening scene to one of the Star Wars movies. show less

Great travelogues are still being written. While bookstores nowadays offer many stories of back-packing adventurers and journalists, often producing exciting, but superficial accounts of encounters with rugged locals, it is good to know that there are still scholars who travel and write in-depth travelogues of inaccessible destinations, such as Iran. Mirrors of the unseen. Journeys in Iran is such a travelogue. It is a real eye-opener. It offers true insight into a country and culture, which show more has been all but shut to outsiders for more than 30 years. Mirrors of the unseen. Journeys in Iran by Jason Elliott has everything to become a classic.

For once, impressions deceive. Born in 1965, Jason Elliott has published two travelogues about Iran and Afghanistan: An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan (1999) and Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran (2006).

While Iran, formerly known as Persia, now is an impoverished country, it boasts an ancient culture, of thousands of years. Elliott is a Persianist, and his fluency is so exceptional that taxi drivers take him for a native speaker, albeit with an accent that is hard to place. This enables Elliott to travel and mingle with the local people very naturally.

Perhaps the strength of Mirrors of the unseen. Journeys in Iran is that the author travels like an adventurer, but can interpret and describe Iranian culture with all the depth and authority of a scholar. It lends the book a great deal of credibility. Still, the book is very well-written, and never bores. In many respects, Jason Elliott is the ideal author to bring Iranian culture to light.

Some of the most revealing insights from the book are that most common Iranians are not to be confused with the extremists that dominate foreign news bulletins. Mirrors of the unseen. Journeys in Iran demonstrates very elegantly how the ancient Persian culture is throroughly rooted in Central Asian culture and bears some similarity to Chinese culture, i.e. not formal, material, but informal culture of the people's customs, for example with regard to hospitality. Elliott describes how he participated in parties that were organized in a type of "samizdat" atmosphere, ready to disperse and comply with Islamic regulations the moment they were discovered.

While most of the book deals with travels throughout Iran and encounters with common people, Elliott does not fail to describe the history of Persia in broad outlines and inform the readers about the magnificence of Persian and Muslim art.

Reading Mirrors of the unseen. Journeys in Iran can really change your mind about Iran. show less

An English schoolboy with no connection to the place, falls mysteriously in love with a far country. As soon as he is old enough, off he goes. And a wonderful, wonderful book results. Just now and then he strains a little too hard with the lyricism of his writing, but I read 99% of this with unalloyed pleasure. Elliot has every quality a traveller should have, including that blind trust in fate - that confidence that the right person or truck will soon turn up. Interlaced with his own show more fascinating first-hand accounts is just the right amount of history and background. This is travel writing par excellence: you are with him as he fights alongside the mujahedin; you lean desperately in your chair to stop the bus going over the precipice; you endure the smell of sweat and goat as you sleep toe to tail with strangers. All in all, the title sums this book up perfectly. show less

Part historical evocation, part travelogue, and part personal quest, An Unexpected Light is the account of Elliot's journey through Afghanistan, a country considered off-limits to travelers for twenty years. Aware of the risks involved, but determined to explore what he could of the Afghan people and culture, Elliot leaves the relative security of Kabul. He travels by foot and on horseback, and hitches rides on trucks that eventually lead him into the snowbound mountains of the North toward show more Uzbekistan, the former battlefields of the Soviet army's "hidden war." Here the Afghan landscape kindles a recollection of the author's life ten years earlier, when he fought with the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Weaving different Afghan times and visits with revealing insights on matters ranging from antipersonnel mines to Sufism, Elliot has created a narrative mosaic of startling prose that captures perfectly the powerful allure of a seldom-glimpsed world. show less