Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir [Paperback]

Marina Nemat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2007

306 pages.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Free Press (2007)
• ISBN-10: 0739490036
• ISBN-13: 978-0739490037
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,416,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't base your decision entirely on the other review., May 5, 2007

By 

Jessica Zimmerman "Jessica" (Lynnwood, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (Hardcover)

You know, I read the other review of this book and it angered me a little. This book is a memoir written by a woman who was subjected to torture and treatment that nearly all reading this will never have to endure. Look at the title of the book, of course it is going to be depressing. She was the victim and this is HER memior, she never claimed to be a writer. It took her twenty years to write this book because of how difficult the whole ordeal was. In writing this book she became physically ill with all the same ailments that she suffered while imprisoned. Please do not let that review make your decision. I had the opportunity to hear her on NPR and I was very impressed with her.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read this book you will not forget them., June 11, 2007

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Tied tightly to a pole, Marina Nemat, age 17, watched the firing squad level their rifles and prepare to end her life.

But they never fired at her.

Several fellow prisoners in Tehran's brutal Evin prison were executed that night, but Marina was spared, literally at the last minute. A pardon from Ayatollah Khomeini himself had commuted her sentence to life imprisonment. One of her prison guards had fallen in love with her and interceded on her behalf. But her salvation came at a heartwrenching price: Ali, her protector, wanted to marry her --- with the stipulation that if she refused him, her own family would be subject to arrest, torture, perhaps even execution.

Marina Nemat has no previous track record as a writer beyond articles in her high school newspaper in Tehran, but she tells this incredible story with grace and eloquence in this engrossing memoir. She offers no outright acknowledgement of ghostwriting help, so take her at her word --- this is her own account, subject to the usual reservations about fading memory and the need to protect the identities of others.

Marina, a member of Iran's tiny Christian minority, comes across in her own words as a spunky teenage political activist, but also as somewhat naïve. Born in 1965, she was dismayed by the excesses of the radical Islamist regime that had taken over Iran when the Shah was driven out. She attended anti-regime street demonstrations and wrote protest articles in her school newspaper, but seemed oblivious to the consequences of such actions. Like any teenager, she was more preoccupied with adolescent crushes and summer vacations on the shore of the Caspian Sea.

Her dream world collapsed in 1982 when she almost accidentally fomented a student strike against teachers who ignored classroom subjects in favor of nonstop Islamist and political indoctrination. She was sent to Evin, brutalized and hounded for the names of other student collaborators. Then came the night when she faced the firing squad. As she was being driven away she heard the gunfire that killed her fellow prisoners.

As dramatic as that episode becomes in her narrative, the extraordinary emotional tangle of her relations with Ali, with his family, and with her own boyfriend and parents is just as gripping a story. Almost against his will, the reader actually finds implacable Ali in many ways an attractive person, sincerely concerned for the welfare of the girl on whom he has visited such misery and fully understanding of her trauma. His family too welcomed her with evident good will, in sharp contrast to the coldness of her own parents, especially her unaffectionate and distant mother.

Marina told Ali plainly that she did not love him, but she went through a conversion ceremony and an Islamic wedding out of dread for what might happen to her own family. In an unskilled writer's hands all this could degenerate into macabre soap opera, but Marina Nemat writes with such conviction that the reader agonizes with her. I kept wishing she would rebel and denounce her tormentors to their faces. She seemed oddly complaisant to her smiling enemies --- until you remembered what rebellion surely would have meant for her and her family.

The layers of irony only get deeper as events unfold. Ali is suddenly assassinated by Islamic hardliners for his dalliance with an "infidel." Marina is finally freed from Evin after two years there, but only through the intervention of Ali's father, a seemingly decent man who risked his own life to restore Marina to her family in accordance with his dying son's last wish. Her savior was the same man who had insisted that Marina convert to Islam before he would allow the marriage.

Marina Nemat eventually married her faithful sweetheart Andre --- a risky move but one she took unflinchingly --- and was allowed to emigrate to Canada where she now lives.

This book is obviously a form of catharsis for her. That is a worthy aim, of course, but beyond that she has drawn for us some complex characters --- her unsympathetic parents, Ali's genuinely human family --- with a sure literary hand. If you read this book you will not forget them. What more could an author desire?

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars could not put it down -, May 15, 2007

By 

Berta Thomas "knitting fiend" (Boise, ID USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Marina Nemat's book is riveting - absolutely! Could not put it down - finished in one night. Her story is a tale of spiritual triumph -love over hate, freedom over opression.Marina's beautiful spirit emanates from pages of the book, instilling hope despite immesurable suffering.
Prisoner of Tehran is a vivid reminder to the world about how cruel and bigoted is Aytolla's regime in Iran.It is an alarming testimony, a wake up call to all.While reading, I wondered if Marina's book will ever be published in her birth country.