The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay is an entertaining and insightful account of a year in Iran. It is written by an Iranian-born American who decides it is time for his American wife and their infant son to experience his homeland; the country they find is both alien and familiar. Think A Year in Provence with pollution and religious police.  

Born in Tehran, Hooman Majd is a New York-based journalist who has lived in the West since infancy; his father, a former diplomat under the Shah, lives in London. Majd’s is not the only story of a family forced into exile in 1979, but there is in this tale the