Live to Tell

In her heartbreaking, triumphant, and elegantly written memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic Revolution. She will discuss her book at 7:30pm, Tuesday, November 9, at Magers & Quinn Booksellers.

In January 1982, Marina Nemat, then just sixteen years old, was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death for political crimes. Until then, her life in Tehran had centered around school, summer parties at the lake, and her crush on Andre, the young man she had met at church. But when math and history were subordinated to the study of the Koran and political propaganda, Marina protested. Soon she was arrested with hundreds of other youths who had dared to speak out, and they were taken to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Two guards interrogated her. One beat her into unconsciousness; the other, Ali, fell in love with her.

"Like a harrowing Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Prisoner of Tehran is the story of Marina Nemat--her unvarnished courage, her intrepid wisdom, her fight to save her integrity and her family in a world in which to be female is to be chattel. Written with the deft hands of a novelist, it is the portrait of a world only too real, where women's lives are cheap--but not this one."--Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars

Lyrical, passionate, and suffused throughout with grace and sensitivity, Marina Nemat's memoir is like no other. Her search for emotional redemption envelops her jailers, her husband and his family, and the country of her birth -- each of whom she grants the greatest gift of all: forgiveness.

Marina Nemat was born in 1965 in Tehran, Iran. She came to Canada in 1991 and has lived there ever since. Prisoner of Tehran was published in Canada in April 2007 and has since been published in 28 other countries. It is an international bestseller.

Details are here.--David E