December 21, 2015
This immersive intellectual history will be, for many Western readers, their first encounter with the complex currents of thought that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and continue to fuel Iran’s evolving story today. Journalist Secor delves into the ideas of the Islamic Republic’s varied rulers and intellectuals, as well as those of their pre-revolutionary antecedents. This is no lightweight summary, with topics including the contradictions of the Iranian revolutionary constitution and Austrian-British political theorist Karl Popper’s abiding influence on critics of the Islamic Republic. The theoretical material is interspersed with short biographies of dissident writers, journalists, and activists who are little known outside Iran, despite the brave stands that sent many to jail; those who survived imprisonment were exiled. Secor’s detailed but accessible explanations provide both concrete facts and a general sense that Iranian politics are far more complex than the thumbnail analyses typically provided in Western coverage. She also makes clear, with multiple accounts of violent crackdowns, that almost no one in Iran is safe from its deeply entrenched security state, with writers coming across as particularly vulnerable. Secor’s clear writing offers a firm grounding in the last 40 years of Iranian political thought and the many actions it has inspired in a complicated and fascinating country.
July 4, 2016
Marno gives us the clear, straightforward narration this fine book deserves. The film and TV actress knows how to dramatize scenes of daring dissident and reformist uprisings as well as emotional descriptions of horror, torture, and death within the context of a nonfiction book. Journalist Secor has written numerous articles on Iran over many years and bases her book on this meticulous research. The book isn't focussed on Iran's leaders since the 1979 revolution or the role of the U.S., but on its political, religious, and artistic activists over the last 40-odd years. The history of the forces playing out in Iran, and the sacrifices of these courageous men and women are made eminently clear, offering us a complex understanding of today's Islamic Republic. A Riverhead hardcover.