My Life As A Traitor: An Iranian Memoir-new

At The Age Of Twenty, An Iranian Student Named Zarah Ghahramani Was Swept Off The Streets Of Tehran And Taken To The Notorious Evin Prison, Where Criminals And Political Dissidents Were Held Side By Side In Conditions Of Legendary Brutality. Her Crime, She Asserts, Was In Wanting To Slide Back Her Headscarf To Feel The Sun On A Few Inches Of Her Hair. That Modest Desire Led Her To A Political Activism Fueled By The Fearless Idealism Of The Young. Her Parents Begged Her To Be Prudent, But Even They Could Not Have Imagined The Horrors She Faced In Prison. She Underwent Psychological And Physical Torture, Hanging On To Sanity By Scratching Messages To Fellow Prisoners On The Latrine Door. She Fought Despair By Recalling Her Idyllic Childhood In A Sprawling And Affectionate Family That Prized Tolerance And Freedom Of Thought. After A Show Trial, Ghahramani Was Driven Deep Into The Desert Outside Tehran, Uncertain If She Was To Be Executed Or Freed. There She Was Abandoned To Begin The Long Walk Back To Reclaim Herself. In Prose Of Astonishing Dignity And Force, Ghahramani Recounts The Ways In Which Power Seduces And Deforms. A Richly Textured Memoir That Celebrates A Triumph Of The Individual Over The State, My Life As A Traitor Is An Affecting Addition To The Literature Of Struggle And Dissent. Zarah Ghahramani Was Born In Tehran In 1981. After Her Release From Prison, She Moved To Australia. My Life As A Traitor Is Her First Book.Robert Hillman Is A Journalist And Novelist Who Has Traveled Widely In The Middle East. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book Of The Yearat The Age Of Twenty, An Iranian Student Named Zarah Ghahramani Was Taken From The Streets Of Tehran To The Notoriously Brutal Evin Prison, Where Criminals And Political Dissidents Were Held Side By Side. A Desire For Freedom As Modest As Sliding Back Her Headscarf To Feel The Sun On Her Hair Had Compelled Her To Join A Group Of University Students Covertly Organizing Peaceful Campus Protests. Ghahramani Was Fueled By Youthful Idealism, And Though Her Parents Encouraged Her To Be Prudent, She Underestimated The Severity Of The Penalties Imposed By The Fundamentalist Regime Running Her Country.She Underwent Psychological And Physical Torture, Hanging On To Sanity By Scratching Messages To Fellow Prisoners On The Latrine Door. She Fought Despair By Recalling Her Idyllic Childhood In A Sprawling And Affectionate Family That Prized Tolerance And Freedom Of Thought. After A Show Trial, Ghahramani Was Driven Deep Into The Desert Outside Tehran, Uncertain If She Was To Be Executed Or Freed. There She Was Abandoned To Begin The Long Walk Back To Rebuild Herself In A World In Which She Had No Trust In Her Countrys Goverment And Where She Would Continue To Challenge Fundamentalist Injustice As She Sought To Reclaim Her Own Liberty. 'A Testimony Of Surviving Senseless Persecution, Imprisonment, Torture, And The Loss Of Years Of One