Iran Memoir

In Captive in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh recount their 259 days in Evin. It’s an amazing story of unyielding faith - when denying God would have meant freedom. Of incredible support from strangers around the world who fought for the women’s release. And of bringing God’s light into one of the world’s darkest places - giving hope to those who had lost everything, and showing love to those in despair.

"A Prison Story - Iran," tells a compelling story of a young woman arrested on a Tehran street for distributing pro-democracy literature in 1981. It reveals the workings of a despotic regime in suppressing voices of reason and consolidating power.

In 2009, Samieh Hezari made a terrible mistake. She flew from her adopted home of Ireland to her birthplace in Iran so her 14-month-old daughter, Rojha, could be introduced to the child's father. When the violent and unstable father refused to allow his daughter to leave and demanded that Samieh renew their relationship, a two-week holiday became a desperate five-year battle to get her daughter out of Iran. If Samieh could not do so before Rojha turned seven, the father could take sole custody - forever.

Heydar Radjavi's evocations of growing up in Tabriz in the 1930s and 1940s describe a traditionalist Iran grappling with modernity, a process as fraught with contradictions and stresses then as it is in Iran today. The tone is always light, the memories wonderfully vivid, and the underlying theme of tension between old and new truly timeless.

A gold medal wrestler, Reza's inspiring life celebrates honor, family and freedom. After he leads bloody battles in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and serves in the Air Force, Reza desires a fate beyond the suffocating suppression of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. On the last night of the 1982 Military World Wrestling Championships, he grips his gold medal, knowing American wrestlers wait minutes away to help him defect.

Was macht man, wenn man auf einer Recherchereise im iranischen Gebirge nicht tanken kann, weil das Benzin aufgrund westlicher Sanktionen knapp ist? Oder wenn man eine vermeintlich zu kurze Hose trägt und die Strafe darauf lautet, in ein Fass mit schwarzer Farbe steigen zu müssen? Und warum reiste Amiri trotz aller Warnungen immer wieder in den Iran?

Iran has suggested that the US government staged the infamous 9/11 attacks in New York City - an insult in the eyes of Al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind 9/11, who called the attacks "the greatest and biggest operation ever committed against America". No word on Iran's theories about the Kennedy assassination or the moon landing.