What the Ayatollah read

       It's always interesting -- though not always illuminating -- to see what those wielding great political power read, and in Akbar Ganji's look at 'The Worldview of Iran's Supreme Leader' in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, Who Is Ali Khamenei ? there's some discussion of what the Ayatollah read:

As a young man, Khamenei loved novels. He read such Iranian writers as Muhammad Ali Jamalzadah, Sadeq Chubak, and Sadeq Hedayat but came to feel that they paled before classic Western writers from France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. He has praised Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Sholokhov and likes Honoré de Balzac and Michel Zévaco, but he considers Victor Hugo supreme.

       He's quoted as saying:

I've read The Divine Comedy. I have read Amir Arsalan. I have also read A Thousand and One Nights ... [But] Les Misérables is a miracle in the world of novel writing .... I have said over and over again, go read Les Misérables once. This Les Misérables is a book of sociology, a book of history, a book of criticism, a divine book, a book of love and feeling.

       (That's right: Amir Arsalan -- under review at the complete review.)
       And:

Khamenei felt that novels gave him insight into the deeper realities of life in the West. "Read the novels of some authors with leftist tendencies, such as Howard Fast," he advised an audience of writers and artists in 1996. "Read the famous book The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, ... and see what it says about the situation of the left and how the capitalists of the so-called center of democracy treated them." He is also a fan of Uncle Tom's Cabin

       Of course, it would be great to see him tackling and recommending some more contemporary work. Local stuff, too -- The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, maybe .....