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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Nemat tells of her harrowing experience as a young Iranian girl at the start of the Islamic revolution. In January 1982, the 16-year-old student activist was arrested, jailed in Tehran's infamous Evin prison, tortured and sentenced to death. Ali, one of her interrogators, intervened moments before her execution, having used family connections with Ayatollah Khomeini himself to reduce her sentence to life in prison. The price: she would convert to Islam (she was Christian) and marry him, or he would see to it that her family and her boyfriend, Andre, were jailed or even killed. She remained a political prisoner for two years. Nemat's engaging memoir is rich with complex characters—loved ones lost on both sides of this bloody conflict. Ali, the man who rapes and subjugates her, also saves her life several times—he is assassinated by his own subordinates. His family embraces Nemat with more affection and acceptance than her own, even fighting for her release after his death. Nemat returns home to feel a stranger: "They were terrified of the pain and horror of my past," she writes. She buries her memories for years, eventually escaping to Canada to begin a new life with Andre. Nemat offers her arresting, heartbreaking story of forgiveness, hope and enduring love—a voice for the untold scores silenced by Iran's revolution. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In Tehran in the early 1980s, after she leads a strike in high school to get her math teacher to teach calculus not politics, Marina, 16, a practicing Catholic, is locked up for two years and tortured with her school friends in the Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious Evin political prison. She is saved from execution by an interrogator, Ali, who wants to marry her and threatens to hurt her family and Catholic boyfriend, Andre, if she refuses. Forced to convert to Islam, she becomes Ali's wife; then he is assassinated by political rivals, and she rejoins her family and marries Andre. They immigrate to Canada in 1991. For more than 20 years, secure in her middle-class life, she keeps silent, until she writes this unforgettable memoir. Haunted by her lost friends and by her betrayal of them, Nemat tells her story without messages and with no sense of heroism. The quiet, direct narrative moves back and forth from Toronto to Nemat's childhood under the shah's brutal regime and, later, during the terror under Khomeini. Despite the rabid politics and terrifying drama, the most memorable aspect of the story is the portrait of Ali, Nemat's savior, in love with her, so kind to her--Does he kill people when he goes off to work in the prison each day? Her comment that she wishes "the world were a simple place where people were either good or evil" is as haunting as her guilt and love. When she asks Andre to forgive her long silence, he asks her to forgive his not asking. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping!,
This review is from: Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (Paperback)
For Christmas 2009, my daughter in Whitehorse recorded a series of CBC podcasts, because she knows I like to stay connected to Canada when I ply the freeways of Europe. My first reaction to the title "Prisoner of Tehran" was a groan. Oh no! I won't hear about Spadina Avenue or Stanley Park, but get more negative stuff out of the Middle East than I care for after listening to the news every day.I popped it in anyway. From the first line, I was hooked. It starts "There is an ancient Persian proverb that says, "The sky is the same colour wherever you go." But the Canadian sky was different from the one I remembered from Iran, it was a deeper shade of blue and seemed endless, as if challenging the horizon". Not only is this a sublimely poetic start to a gripping story; it matched my own experiences as immigrant to Canada from hazy Europe. From there on, I hung on the narrator's every word, as the story unfolds of terrible fear and pain in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, and the ultimate victory of decency. I have since bought the book at a dozen or more times, both in English and in German, and given it to friends and family. After I finished listening I did something I had never done before. I wrote an email to the author and thanked her for the story. I didn't really expect a reply. At best, something along the lines of "Thanks for your kind words, Gabriel". But I was wrong. Ms. Nemat replied in detail to my comments. And from this, a beautiful friendship has evolved spanning two continents. Ms.Nemat's humility and warmth just blew me away. On Amazon Germany, Prisoner of Tehran has 19 ratings as of November 2011, almost all top 5 stars. The only other Canadian book I have encountered in Germany so far with higher ratings is "Anne of Green Gables" - probably the most famous piece of literature ever to flow out of a Canadian quill. Prisoner of Tehran was published in 28 countries. In Germany, it comes with a sticker "The Bestseller". Not only has Prisoner of Tehran become the voice of all victims of political torture and persecution - the book has also succeeded in communicating Canadian values and literature throughout the world. Canada could not ask for a better ambassador overseas. Prisoner of Tehran has a phenomenal emotional impact and makes me proud to live in Europe with a Canadian passport.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating Story!,
By
This review is from: Prisoner Of Tehran (Hardcover)
Thank you to the author for sharing her story on love and bravery in the face of injustice. Stories like these need to be told. It does not bother me that some of the details were fabricated - there is disclosure of this at the beginning of the book. I would assume that the content in the book is as truthful as that in the media, if not more so. I recommend the book to all. It is an easy read - though heart wrenching - and I could not put it down.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prisoner of Tehran,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Prisoner Of Tehran (Hardcover)
I live in Montreal North, Quebec, and although I have yet to receive the Prisoner of Tehran book to date, I know that it has been shipped about a month earlier before my move from the Saint-Laurent area in the west of Montreal to where I live now since March 31st. Although I cannot review the Prisoner of Tehran as well as I am able to since I have not had the pleasure of reading it yet, but because of the fact that I have heard good reviews and have had the pleasure of watching the Marilyn Dennis show where the author was being interviewed by the host, I know that I will just love it!
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