Let me just get this out of the way, regardless of WHO YOU ARE, this is a really good book (plus the story has an amazing twist) . The people who feel they have to go on the defensive and gave this book a bad review, I feel sorry for. I read to open my mind, not to close it; THAT DOES NOT MEAN I TAKE TO HEART the veracity of everything I read . Small minds come in many different flavors, so please don't feel so special.

Let me just get this out of the way, regardless of WHO YOU ARE, this is a really good book (which I actually read from front to back and will probably re-read) that any human being should like, plus the story has an amazing twist . The people who feel they have to go on the defensive and gave this book a bad review, I feel sorry for. I read to open my mind, not to close it; THAT DOES NOT MEAN I TAKE TO HEART the veracity of everything I read . Small minds come in many different flavors, so don't feel so special, get a hobby!

"...Something terrible is happening in this country....There have been protests and rallies against the shah. One dictatorship will go, and a worse one will take its place, the same as in Russia...It will be more dangerous, because this revolution is hiding behind the name of God."-the author's aunt

Marina Nemat was born a year after me, so in reading her memoir, I couldn't help thinking of where I was during the years of which she suffered so much during the Islamic Revolution in the late seventies and early eighties. She was a high school student at a Zoroastrian school in Teheran, was arrested at the age of 16 because she had the audacity to walk out of her calculus class. The rest of her class left with her because they were not being taught math at all but the Ayatollah's ideology. She is a christian but had many friends of various faiths including muslims. Her first boyfriend was a muslim. Following her arrest and subsequent torture, she was nearly executed but was saved at the last moment. I couldn't help but think of Dostoyevsky who suffered the same fate during tzarist Russia. Parts of this true tale are hard to read especially her descriptions of how she and others were tortured. I was always relieved when she'd pass out.

She buried her memories within her psyche, resurrected them when she was told of the brutal torture, rape, and murder in 2003 of an Iranian photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, at the same prison where she had been. She felt she had to tell her story.

It's so hard to believe that one's biggest crime could be simply that of thinking. A large majority of the Ayatollah's first victims were students searching for a cause they could believe in. There was a big bang of new political organizations following the ousting of the Shah, but it was mainly to monitor people and mark them before the Ayatollah began his purges. I recommend this book be read to understand this excruciating and tumultuous period within Iran as one order left and a worse one was put in place.

I also recommend that it be read to realize that there are many people worldwide who don't live in my beautiful, free country and whose lives are not considered sacred and are brutally murdered and tortured as in a country like Iran or North Korea or the Sudan, etc.....

I can't help but think that G-d spared her life because of His faithfulness and that He will hear the cries of His people although He may have strange ways of answering....She had fallen in love with a christian at her church sometime before she was arrested. Many people prayed for her during her imprisonment. It's a really sweet love story between these two.

I thought it was well written, and I loved her stories of her childhood in Iran before the revolution began. I loved her relationship with her grandmother, her summer vacations to the Caspian Sea, and the Armenian man who sold her her first book in English of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

I'm sorry I cannot review this book as I have yet to receive it. Maybe you should improve your delivery serviuces to countries such as mine.!

"...Something terrible is happening in this country....There have been protests and rallies against the shah. One dictatorship will go, and a worse one will take its place, the same as in Russia...It will be more dangerous, because this revolution is hiding behind the name of God."-the author's aunt

Marina Nemat was born a year after me, so in reading her memoir, I couldn't help thinking of where I was during the years of which she suffered so much during the Islamic Revolution in the late seventies and early eighties. She was a high school student at a Zoroastrian school in Teheran, was arrested at the age of 16 because she had the audacity to walk out of her calculus class. The rest of her class left with her because they were not being taught math at all but the Ayatollah's ideology. She is a christian but had many friends of various faiths including muslims. Her first boyfriend was a muslim. She was nearly executed but was saved at the last moment. I couldn't help but think of Dostoyevsky. Parts of this true tale are hard to read especially her descriptions of how she and others were tortured. I was always relieved when she'd pass out. I thought it was well written, and I loved her stories of her childhood in Iran before the revolution began. I loved her relationship with her grandmother, her summer vacations to the Caspian Sea, the Armenian man who sold her her first book in English of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

She buried her memories within her psyche, resurrected them when she was told of the brutal torture, rape, and murder of an Iranian photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, at the same prison where she had been. She felt she had to tell her story.

It's so hard to believe that one's biggest crimes could be simply that of thinking. A large majority of the Ayatollah's first victims were students searching for a cause they could believe in. There was a big bang of new political organizations following the ousting of the Shah, but it was mainly to monitor people and mark them before the Ayatollah began his purges. I recommend this book be read to understand the excruciating and tumultuous period within Iran as one order left and a worse one was put in place.

I also recommend that it be read to realize that there are many people worldwide who don't live in my beautiful, free country and whose lives are not considered sacred and are brutally murdered and tortured as in a country like Iran or North Korea or the Sudan, etc.....

I can't help but think that G-d spared her life because of His faithfulness and that He will hear the cries of His people although He may have strange ways of answering....She had fallen in love with a christian at her church sometime before she was arrested. It's a really sweet love story.

This is a sad story of a little girl in which she is forced to set aside the crown of liberty and live like a beggar, but she fights to retain her dignity...
Excellent Job, Great Audacity.

As a person of the same age as of this woman, who has lived in Iran until 1994, I have to say I find this book a bad piece of fiction, written for the Western audience and ready-to-be-sold to Hollywood to make a crappy movie.
The truth is, in those years our life as a nation was miserable. Evin prison was full of political prisoners, and there was no freedom of speech. But things were not the way Nemat describes it. Her memoir is ridiculously fabricated with lies about everything you can imagine about Iran. People of age 15 were executed in Iran in those years, but for reasons more politically important than leading a strike in high school! Is she crazy? If the Iranian regime wanted to arrest every high-school student for their argument with their math teacher they could not rule the country. And that story about being saved by her interrogator: nothing can be more far from reality than that. This is more like an emotional Hollywood movie than the reality I have lived in.

I cannot believe people here actually believe this nonsense. This woman is either a charlatan, or a psycho.

I have read the reviews that are good, bad as well as the very heated discussions about this book and I have to say that it is good that this book generated such intense reactions in mind of the readers as it did for me. Regardless of the accuracy of the author's account as I don't have the first hand experiences, I assume that most of the author's accounts of the general political and cultural environment in Iran are fairly accurate. My reaction is again, the disbelief over the oppression and violence towards women in the name of religion and traditions, and the conspicuous lack of uproar in the international community in the name of political correctness or "cultural sensitivity". I don't mean to minimize the importance of other causes that received attention, such as Chinese government against Tibet, but when it comes to women, the world seems to be rather silent. Books such as this, and other memoirs such as Infidel, Bookseller in Kabul, Wild Swans,and memoirs by FLDS survivors are important means to raise awareness, therefore need to be written and to be read. Having said that, I gave only two stars because the writing is very poor and flat and some recollections of her childhood experiences seem too romanticized and blantantly inconsistent with her developemental stages, which raised questions in me about the believability of her account, and eventually became distracting to me.

IF YOU LIKE REAL LIFE STORIES YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK. YOU GET TO KNOW HOW LIFE IS IN IRAN AND HOW FANATIC RELIGION IS USED AS AN EXCUSE FOR THE ATROCITIES THAT ARE PRACTICED AGAINST VERY YOUNG AND INNOCENT PEOPLE,THE ABSOLUTE LACK OF FREEDOM ... THINGS THAT WE CAN'T IMAGINE ARE STILL HAPPENING IN IRAN , IN THE 21 ST CENTURY !!!!