Captive in Iran

Author: Maryam Rostampour
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1414382200
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh knew they were putting their lives on the line. Islamic laws in Iran forbade them from sharing their Christian beliefs, but in three years, they’d covertly put New Testaments into the hands of twenty thousand of their countrymen and started two secret house churches. In 2009, they were finally arrested and held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, a place where inmates are routinely tortured and executions are commonplace. In the face of ruthless interrogations, persecution, and a death sentence, Maryam and Marziyeh chose to take the radical—and dangerous—step of sharing their faith inside the very walls of the government stronghold that was meant to silence them. In Captive in Iran, two courageous Iranian women recount how God used their 259 days in Evin Prison to shine His light into one of the world’s darkest places, giving hope to those who had lost everything and showing love to those in despair.

Captive Society

Author: Saeid Golkar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231801351
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
Iran's Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed (Sazeman-e Basij-e Mostazafan), commonly known as the Basij, is a paramilitary organization used by the regime to suppress dissidents, vote as a bloc, and indoctrinate Iranian citizens. Captive Society surveys the Basij's history, structure, and sociology, as well as its influence on Iranian society, its economy, and its educational system. Saied Golkar's account draws not only on published materials—including Basij and Revolutionary Guard publications, allied websites, and blogs—but also on his own informal communications with Basij members while studying and teaching in Iranian universities as recently as 2014. In addition, he incorporates findings from surveys and interviews he conducted while in Iran.

Between Two Worlds

Author: Roxana Saberi
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 9780061965289
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
“Between Two Worlds is an extraordinary story of how an innocent young woman got caught up in the current of political events and met individuals whose stories vividly depict human rights violations in Iran.” — Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Between Two World is the harrowing chronicle of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi’s imprisonment in Iran—as well as a penetrating look at Iran and its political tensions. Here for the first time is the full story of Saberi’s arrest and imprisonment, which drew international attention as a cause célèbre from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and leaders across the globe.

Song of a Captive Bird

Author: Jasmin Darznik
Publisher:
ISBN: 0399182314
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society's expectations to find her voice and her destiny. "Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal." All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel, gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight, and tradition seeks to clip her wings. Forced into a suffocating marriage, Forugh runs away and falls into an affair that fuels her desire to write and to achieve freedom and independence. Forugh's poems are considered both scandalous and brilliant; she is heralded by some as a national treasure, vilified by others as a demon influenced by the West. She perseveres, finding love with a notorious filmmaker and living by her own rules, at enormous cost. But the power of her writing only grows stronger amid the upheaval of the Iranian revolution. Inspired by Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews, and including original translations of her poems, this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran, and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.--Amazon.

A Sliver of Light

Author: Shane Bauer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547985533
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
Three Americans captured by Iranian forces and held in captivity for years reveal, for the first time, the full story of their imprisonment and fight for freedom.

Prisoner of Tehran

Author: Marina Nemat
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416537430
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
Follows the author's tragic childhood in 1980s Iran, which was shaped by war, the Khomeini regime, and her work as a teen anti-propaganda activist, efforts for which she was brutally beaten and sentenced to death before a guard offered to save her and protect her family if she would convert to Islam and marry him. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

Taken Hostage

Author: David Farber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontation with the forces of radical Islam. Using hundreds of recently declassified government documents, historian David Farber takes the first in-depth look at the hostage crisis, examining its lessons for America's contemporary War on Terrorism. Unlike other histories of the subject, Farber's vivid and fast-paced narrative looks beyond the day-to-day circumstances of the crisis, using the events leading up to the ordeal as a means for understanding it. The book paints a portrait of the 1970s in the United States as an era of failed expectations in a nation plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. It reveals an American government ill prepared for the fall of the Shah of Iran and unable to reckon with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his militant Islamic followers. Farber's account is filled with fresh insights regarding the central players in the crisis: Khomeini emerges as an astute strategist, single-mindedly dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The Americans' student-captors appear as less-than-organized youths, having prepared for only a symbolic sit-in with just a three-day supply of food. ABC news chief Roone Arledge, newly installed and eager for ratings, is cited as a critical catalyst in elevating the hostages to cause célèbre status. Throughout the book there emerge eerie parallels to the current terrorism crisis. Then as now, Farber demonstrates, politicians failed to grasp the depth of anger that Islamic fundamentalists harbored toward the United States, and Americans dismissed threats from terrorist groups as the crusades of ineffectual madmen. Taken Hostage is a timely and revealing history of America's first engagement with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, one that provides a chilling reminder that the past is only prologue.

Lori's Song

Author: Lori Foroozandeh
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781432711825
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Her name is Lori Foroozandeh, and this is her true story.Lori lived her young years as a victim of abuse. As she grew older she fell into a classic pattern of self-destructiveness. But by the time she was twenty-seven, she was doing her utmost to create a sane life. Mohammad Foroozandeh seemed like a man she could trust, a man who would care for her and respect her. Though she knew he engaged in drug use, she ignored the warning signs and married him. Two years later, he asked her to move to Iran, promising that she could pursue her career, assuring her that the country was quite modern. For four years, Lori adjusted as best she could to the oppressive customs of the land, but as her husband grew more demanding of her, he also became more violent.After the World Trade Center bombings, Mohammad told her they must leave Iran. He purchased bus tickets that he said would take them out of the country and eventually to America. But before they could escape, armed guards attacked and kidnapped her. Lori was blindfolded and taken to a paramilitary POW camp somewhere in the hills. Then the nightmare began?Ǫ. six weeks of horrific beatings, raping, torture, and starvation.

Guests of the Ayatollah

Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 1555846084
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 710

Book Description
The New York Times–bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a “suspenseful and inspiring” account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 (The Wall Street Journal). On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. “The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page.” —Time “A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Essential reading . . . A.” —Entertainment Weekly

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588360792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire