Read this book in about one day while traveling back from Europe. Amazing story of one woman's struggle against the islamic regime of Iran. I can't believe this stuff is still happening around the world and read books like this to remind myself not to forget those who are victims of corrupt regimes. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East and human rights (particularly women's rights issues). ( )

Subtitle: One Woman's Story of Survival Inside a Torture Jail. Marina Nemat's incredible memoir about growing up in Tehran and being sent to infamous Evin prison on political charges. An amazing story told by an amazingly strong woman. ( )

It is well written, in that the author, Marina Nemat, didn't put the horror or being a prisoner into everything she wrote. Throughout the book when the violence, or horrors became too much, she would swtich us to memories that led up to her arrest, and inprisonment at the Evin Prison.

She was only 16 when she was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death for political crimes. Up to then, her life was more of a typical teenagers life, school, summer parties at the lake, and her relationship with Andre, a young man she met at church.

Sentenced to death, but Ali, an interrogator, intervened just moments before her scheduled death. Ali was able to get her sentence reduced to life, although Marina did not think it was fair. Death would have been better than the torture of life

Ali then went to the front lines of the Iran war & didn't return for months. Once he did return, he dropped a surprise on Marina, he wanted to marry her, he couldn't get her off his mind, even being at the front. And if she didn't want to marry him, well her family may come to some harm.

Marina gave in and married Ali. If only to protect her family, but Ali was also able to get her life sentence reduced by having a new trial.

Meanwhile, Ali's family insisted that Marina convert to Islam. After being a Christain her entire life, this was very hard for her to do, but she had no other choice. She felt that God wasn't there for her in many ways anyways.

Married, and trying to have a life together, Marina becomes pregnate. Unsure if she feels joy at this turn of events or not.

Then one evening as they were leaving Ali's parents home after dinner, Ali was shot down in murder. He did manage to push Marina to the ground, so she wasn't hurt, saving her life. Unfortunatly, she did lose the baby.

Freed from her forced marriage, Marina was now able to try & continue the life she once knew before being a political prisoner. Andre, her love, had waited for her. They were married and after her husband worked for the University for 3 years, they were able to emmigrat to Canada, where they live now with their 2 children.

The loose end I felt in this book was her religion, or faith. She never talked about it again after converting to Islam. SHe was married to Andre in the church, and she mentioned that it was risky, since the government was watching her and converting to Christianity was something that was not allowed, but she never addressed her own faith.

It was a good book, and it's one that I will keep and read again, but it's so annoying when I'm laying in bed, trying to fall asleep and all I can think about are loose ends in the book I just read. ( )

I found this to be a fascinating, well-written memoir, and highly recommend it. The author's story is certainly worth telling. Arrested as a political prisoner at age 16, she was sentenced to death for "crimes against the state" after Iran's Islamic Revolution. Marina's life was saved by a guard who fell in love with her; she was then forced to marry him on pain of her family being harmed. Marina's story made me feel grateful to live in a country where such things don't happen. I also found it very impressive that she did not paint everything in shades of black and white, and was even able to show the human, kind side of the guard who threatened her loved ones, married her against her will and raped her.

I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the Middle East. I think it would also be good for use in the college or high school classroom. ( )

The writing is pretty crude, but the story is so powerful--dare I say unique?--that it's nonetheless a page-turner. If it's true, of course, but I'll get to that.

Crude: try as she might, she can't describe character, so her friends blur together. (Whatever happened to Sarah, btw?). I don't have a picture of the prison. Clothes and food and meals are often detailed ... you get the feeling that prison may have stalled her development at high school age.

Good parts: This filled in what, for me, were big omissions in Reading Lolita in Tehran. What had happened to those girls in prison? I kept wondering. What were the various anti-Shah movements?

This tells you that at least the female prisoners in Evin prison weren't alone; they were in large groups in a too small cell, but still. Perhaps rape before execution wasn't so common, after all (though there's the coda re the Iran-Canadian journalist who was murdered in Evin in 2003). This book gives you the impression Marina's fellow prisoners were all about the same age as well--high school or university. Middle class, urban. Hard to tell if any of them had done anything as criminal as throwing a bomb.

Nonetheless, safe to say, that most had done little more than mount a feeble protest in school (like Marina), had a communist or Mujehedin sibling, perhaps attended a protest. What drove Marina to take the risk of attending protests, by herself, again and again? She isn't able to convey that sense of crazy youthful risk-taking or fervent hatred of the new rule. And what does her future husband Andre think of the revolutionary convulsions?

Right. I digress. The good parts. Her parents are eerily, weirdly cold but their Russian ancestry (both on the maternal side) is very interesting. Then Andre's Hungarian parents. All the ripple effects of the Russian Revolution, WW2 (when Hungarians were sent to be interned in India. Could someone write a memoir or novel about that?). Her grandmother's first love killed in a demonstration in Russia.

This reminded me, momentarily, of the generations of suffering in Vietnam--one trauma and heartbreak again and again. Except: this family, and Andre's, seem to achieve middle class-hood so easily in a new country that still has and had such a huge underclass.

Marina is a Russian Orthodox Catholic, her faith pulls her through--but this means she can't explain much about the forces that supported the revolution. Who's secular? Who's not? Inhere school, there are other Christians (Armenian, Syrian, Zorastrians (in fact, the school is Zorastrian), Jews and, of course, Muslims. But she doesn't make any distinction between Shiite and Sunni!

It surprised me that the devout family of Ali--the prison captor that saved her life, then forced her into marriage--was so well off. Also kind and probably educated at least to office jobs. What do they think he is doing in that prison? Would/could a family so devoted to the Khomeini cause really pull strings to get a Christian widowed daughter-in-law released?

That was a tiny thing gnawing at me. Bigger was the scene where she was saved from execution while others fell before the firing squad. Biggest of all was the ease with which she went in and out of prison with this Ali fellow. But, as she says, she's taken liberties, especially by altering and convering certain characters.

The prison: well, I've read prison memoirs and about certain prisons (colonial French, notably) and one aspect doesn't naturally follow another. Some people are kept in little boxes for years on end. Then in the same prison, large groups are able to meet everyday in an open area, etc.

But then ... go to amazon.com and start with the one-star reviews. They're by Iranians. One by a representative of former Iranian prisoners (see the pdf link). They don't provide enough detail, but they do refer to the kind of prison details that give one pause. Maybe she took up with a temporary marriage to a prison officer ... it's embarrassing to her now, maybe shameful, maybe a sign of collaboration ... so she made this story up and conveniently got rid of the husband. If this were a Holacaust-type memoir, all the inconsistencies would be tracked down, as would the identities of Ali and family (wouldn't other ex-prisoners know who he was, given that he seems to have been in a very high position?

They refer to other telling things ... she doesn't seem to know much about the nature of trials, trials by hospital bedside, minute trials--things that other prisoners would have talked about. One also mentions the description of a single cell isn't right. She even gives numbers, so that would seem easy to verify. Many of these women were prisoners during the same period, so do they recognize Marina?

They also don't think that Marina's transgressions would be enough to get her thrown in prison. Now that, I don't buy. She was definitely friends with people who were members of clandestine organizations. She could be linked in various ways==perhaps a friend's confession under torture, a fanatical teacher .. ( )