Prisoner of Tehran.

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

The thread that weaves throughout Marina Nemat’s memoir is courage. She navigates the loneliness of growing up in Iran with distant and sometimes emotionally cruel parents by bonding with her grandmother and escaping in hard-found English books. The same strength of character prompts her, at age 16, to ask a teacher to teach calculus instead of continuously rehearsing political propaganda in the name of the recent Islamic Revolution. Her strength of character led her more acts of defiance, including anonymously documenting an incident in which the Revolutionary Guards opened fire on unarmed demonstrators.

Eventually Nemat was arrested and incarcerated in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. She was accused of being an enemy of the Revolution, tortured physically, and marked for execution. Throughout the ordeal she remained stoic, arguing her politics and faith with one of her interrogators. This valour saved her life—for almost unfathomably the interrogator begins to love her and prevents her execution. Later she agreed to marry him, having been persuaded of the danger to her family were she to refuse. Nemat, a Christian, was obliged to convert to Islam, an act as confounding to her spiritually as her wedding night was physically. Yet again she found a way to negotiate between the survival instinct and integrity to her religious, ethical, and emotional being.

The remainder of Nemat’s history is as astounding, and at every turn it demonstrates resilience coupled with a spirited sense of self.

This is a strong and elegantly written memoir. The account alone would carry the book, but Nemat couples the page-turning narrative with smooth prose. She delivers the facts with journalistic professionalism, she delves into the emotional and psychological depth of the will to survive, she celebrates the beauty of nature and human interaction, and she offers political commentary that is confident without being bitter. Finally, her greatest courage lies in her ability to revisit and chronicle her horror-filled past, and that her thoughts were recorded with emotions that are often strong but never shrill. Her story is truly astounding, at every turn demonstrating her resilience and spirited sense of self. Nemat has scored many personal victories, and this book is one of them.