Review of A Bitter Veil by Libby Fischer Hellman

Iran is in the news these days and the issues are important to us all, so it was with interest that I picked up Libby Fischer Hellman’s new novel, A Bitter Veil, set in the midst of the Iranian revolution that brought Khomeini to power. In a viscerally effective tale she brings that key moment to life, and we see it in a nuanced way that we would do well to carry into our understanding of the current crisis. I certainly remembered the overthrow of the shah and the hostage crisis, but I can’t say I ever got inside that world until I read Hellman’s book.

It is perhaps a cliché to say that some themes transcend time and stay central to the human experience throughout the ages. But it’s still a profound notion despite its common currency. A Bitter Veil develops two such universal themes (along with other lesser ones, of course).

One of those themes Hellman succinctly identifies in her author notes:
“I am drawn to stories about women whose choices have been taken away from them. How do they react? Do they simply surrender? Become victims? Or can some survive, even triumph over their travails?”

Anna, Hellman’s main character, hangs in a delicate balance throughout the novel, and we don’t know how she’ll manage when extremist Islam traps her inside Iran under a veil. She’s no superhero, but she has to cope with extraordinary circumstances. When we meet her, she’s a college student in Chicago hunting down a copy of Rumi’s poetry. She meets Nouri, an Iranian engineering student, when he recites lines of Rumi to her at the bookstore. They are pretty typical college kids—sexual attraction, cultural exoticism, intelligent discussions, politics, all that heady brew draw them together. There are undercurrents of concern. They both seem in different ways too vulnerable for safety, too needy and dependent. The mama in me wanted to give them a lecture about strength of character and making decisions that are wise for you in the long run rather than decisions that feed into your weakest sides. Hellman has done a superb job of creating these two people. If I want to lecture an author’s characters, she’s clearly persuaded me they are real. But these are subtle problems that they suffer from, the sort most of us have in one way or another. If things had gone as planned, they’d have been fine. But instead they marry and go to Iran at the opening of its paroxysms. So what happens to a woman, and not an extraordinarily strong woman, when her freedoms are taken away, one by one, and her life is threatened multiple times and submission to extremism seems like the only way out? I’ll let you read and find out. It’s a good story.

The other theme that Hellman gradually unfolds is best summed up by Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil.” As Anna says at one point when describing Iran during the revolution, “It’s as if an entire country—an entire culture—slipped off its axis. Black became white. White became black. Kind people were unkind. Good people were bad.” Arendt’s notion that an ordinary person can be led to evil actions arose from her study of the Nazis, and Hellman has Nazis in this book. I won’t tell you how—it will spoil some of the plot—but she creates a subtle and effective parallel between the Iranian extremism and Germany under the Nazis. She shows willingness of “good” people in Iran to perform orgies of killing through the process of identifying the “other” and then vowing to eradicate that other in order to purify society. Hellman includes amongst the “good” villains those allied with the Islamic revolution and those just trying to survive. Isn’t that precisely why such villainy works? No need to be a true believer to become tangled in the darkness.

There’s a hopeful message to this book and a deep cross-cultural sympathy. Both make it an uplifting read not a depressing one, despite the sadness. The good story and characters make it an engaging read. The subject matter and setting make it an illuminating one.