The Bathhouse (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: hooded repentant, toilet line, tray window, Brother Jamali, Sister Soghra, Brother Hosseini (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Like the young male protagonist of Moshiri's big first novel, At the Wall of the Almighty [BKL F 15 00], the 17-year-old high-school graduate who tells of her time in an old bathhouse used as a prison remains nameless throughout this tersely reportorial short novel. She is arrested, and her home is ransacked one hot August night on account of her brother's involvement with revolutionary leftists in Iran in the early 1980s, when Khomeini's Shiite revolution became more resolutely authoritarian. Taken to the bathhouse, she suffers her first humiliation when her period starts and no one will get her a tampon. She is put in a cell with several others--the pregnant wife of a leftist, a professor and her aged mother, the mother of a young rebel, a surgeon, a younger teenager, and a madwoman--and let out only to be interrogated and tortured, to go to the toilet, or to shower once a week. One by one, her companions are taken away for good. At last, she gets new cellmates, female leftist guerrillas, with whom she suffers further torture and is nearly executed. Released at last, she collapses on a street bench, and her period starts again. Written with the simple authority of an oral deposition, packing the punch of All Quiet on the Western Front, this is both a resolutely nonpartisan antirevolutionary brief and a gripping, harrowing story of personal courage and endurance. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"As human rights abuses involving women in the Middle East continue to be exposed, Moshiri's prison novel about a 17-year-old Iranian woman seized at the beginning of the Iran's fundamentalist revolution provides a poignant but brutal reminder that the problem is anything but new. . . . Moshiri's novel is based on interviews with several Iranian women who endured similar ordeals, and the starkly simple tale she tells is convincing in tone and substance. Though very little of her past is revealed, the narrator is a vivid character, an ordinary student with a stubborn, rebellious streak that enables her to endure the horrors of prison. Moshir's impressive novel works at two levels, telling a compelling story while bearing witness to a brutal period in Iranian history. -- Review

'It's hard to stop reading. . . . Horrible as it is, you don't want to turn away from the girl's first-person nightmare. The language in The Bathhouse is simple, the dialogue taut, the tension immediate.' -Houston Chronicle '[A] gut-wrenching, eye-opening novel. The Bathhouse shows what happens when ideology runs amok. It honors the humanity and sacrifice of the victims.' -Tacoma News Tribune

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Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; Second Edition edition (April 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807083577
• ISBN-13: 978-0807083574
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #290,883 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book you want to read in one sitting!, April 21, 2004

By	Retired musician (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

Once in a while a book comes along that you start to read and you can't put down until you finish reading it. This is one such book. The naive school girl who is taken to a horrible political prison starts out as any young, innocent and naive teenager who is not interested or involved in politics. But once there, she witnesses and experiences what is happening to political prisoners, in this case women prisoners, behind the prison walls all in the name of God and all because they do not agree with the ideology of the ruling class. This is not a story limited to a country or conflict. It is a universal story that can happen, has happened and is happening in many countries. But, Farnoosh Moshiri somehow takes us along with her young protagonist through the events of this book so that it is as if we are experiencing them with her. The writing is powerful yet natural and flowing and you just can't stop reading until the end. And, when you close the book, it is as if you have matured along side the protagonist, all in the short span of a month for her and just hours for you, but the lessons will stay with you for a lifetime. I recommend this book to everyone, especially to young women.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A look into the heart of the matter, October 11, 2004

By	ckj "cliff" (pensacola, Fl.) - See all my reviews

What a fantastic book. Very insightful and informative. What one should take away from this book as well as Mrs. Moshiri's other novel "At The Wall of The Almighty" is how introspective Iranians are about their lives before and after the revolution. I believe that through these books, people in the west can come to a better understanding of this society and culture. We hear so much about war, terrorism, and the development of weapons programs that we overlook that the Iranians have a rich and beautiful culture and so much to offer us in the form of literature.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When no one is innocent, February 25, 2003

By	Bob Dunn (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bathhouse (Hardcover)

When a teenage girl is arrested by Iranian authorities, it's more like an accidental abduction. Her brother dabbles in politics forbidden by the fundamentalist ruling regime, but the girl is innocent.

Only there is no innocence in The Bathhouse. If you have been apprehended, you must have committed a crime. If you have committed a crime, you must be punished. The girl finds herself in a living hell, where torture is an art form. She - and all those around her - suffers in an accelerating cycle of pain and humiliation limited only by the imagination of her captors. And yet the girl finds, and creates, sparks of humanity in this most ihhuman setting.

The Bathhouse might be an attempt to measure the depths of institutionalized evil. In spite of being forced to contemplate so much unrestrained cruelty and violence, I could not make myself look away. And I could not put this book down until I finished it.