American Journal of Islam and Society (Apr 2012)
Ghosts of Revolution
Abstract
Shahla Talebi’s memoir, Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran, is painful to read; it is hard to read. The book, a recollection of Shahla Talebi’s years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, is jail-like itself ‒ unrelenting in stark accounts of torture, murders, madness, and mayhem. From the very start, the prologue, until the very last words of the epilogue and even its twelve pages of acknowledgements, the agony goes on. Every chapter, every paragraph, and every line stabs the readers with the hopelessness of Iranian citizens caught in the murderous, diabolical schemes of the uncontrolled, unethical, and ruthless government, which has ruled Iran since the Revolution of 1979 ...