Memoirs: Iran - Iraq - Israel

"In this poignant autobiography, Farman Farmaian brings Persian history and culture alive. Her life spans nearly a century of tremendous change in Iran: from a sheltered childhood in her father's harem through her studies at the University of Southern California where she was the first Iranian student to attend to her return to Iran to found and direct the Tehran School of Social Work from 1958 until 1979 when radical students took over the school and forced her into exile." (Library Journal)

"The second-year Iranian college student in 2001 knew that making that speech meant trouble, but she had no real expectation of being kidnapped in the heart of Tehran and hustled off to the notorious Evin Prison." (Publisher's Weekly)

"In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels." (Amazon)

"The question "why did they stay?" haunts this engrossing memoir, as Salbi shows how Saddam Hussein "managed to make decent people like [her] parents complicit in their own oppression." "Growing up in Baghdad," the author remembers, "was probably not unlike growing up in an American suburb," but then Salbi's father became Saddam's private pilot." (Publishers Weekly)

"Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq." (Publishers Weekly)