Russian and Persian, woman, youth. The perfect combination for struggle in a Middle Eastern nation filled with the adrenaline of revolt.
It is 1982, Marina is only sixteen years old when her cozy Tehran life is devastated by revolutionary guards that arrest her for speaking her mind on paper.
Most teenagers don't know that there was a revolution in Iran; long before she was enlisted as a terrorist country, before people marched up and down ground zero in New York City to avoid her president to visit the ruins of the 9/11 terrorist attack. But there was a time, Marina's tale happens in the time of transition between what was and what is: The so called revolution.
This event oriented memoir challenges the reader to see the smudged confines of good and evil, to define a man who kills innocent people without guilt but at the same time is a welcoming husband and caring son capable of falling in love and willing to sacrifice himself.
The word Evin is reminiscent of horror to most Iranians who have lived through the eighties. This is an account of why.
The story is gripping and though when I read it I did not have much background information about the country or the time, it was very easy to catch up with the hints that Nemat craftily incorporated in her writing. The words flow and it is rare that one is required to read a sentence twice.
If you care about human rights, this is one more story of their infringement, read it.