Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat

Genre: War-time Memoir (nonfiction biography)

Ratings:
Ease with which to read/enjoyable author style 4.0
Suitable ending 3.5
Personal favoritism 3.5
Poetic language 3.5
Memorable 4.75
Original, creative plot 4.75
Original, well-developed characters 4.5
Probability of recommendation 5.0
Ability to "move" emotionally 5.0
Literary value and/or educational value 5.0
Total: 43.5

Final Rating: 4 stars

4-sentence summary:
Marina Nemat, in her striking memoir, was a 16-year-old girl living in Tehran, Iran when the Ayatollah had her arrested and sent to a prison camp named Evin. Marina, struggling through the tortures of the camp and the deaths of her friends, is given a literal "get out of jail free" card, but at a terrible cost. In a combination of both flashbacks, present-day, and Iran in the 1980's, Marina tells her tale with sadness and remorse and leaves you wondering at humanity's capacity for good and evil.

Critique:
I don't know much about Iran, or the Ayatollah, and I'd never heard of Evin before. However, we've all read prison tales (think Holocaust) .... and the themes are the same. The captors try to break the bodies and spirits of their prisoners. It's an intimidating task to read a novel such as this, but I believe it is essential.

This book was not as gruesome as it could have been; Marina refrains from the harsher details. One of my main criticisms of the book is that I personally don't agree with Marina on a moral level. She has a very black-and-white view of morality, good and evil. In my case, though, as shown through this novel, I believe that even "evil people" (torturers, prison guards) have the capacity for good. Marina was a frustrating but very realistic narrator. Her self-questioning keeps you in the moment and second-guessing what will happen next. The novel was written very plainly (with no complicated prose) and was kept to a reasonable length; I read it within 24 hours.

I think this book would be an excellent choice for a high school library or in any high school English or Social Studies class; our students need to know what is happening around the world so they can learn from the past. I would definitely pair this book with "Stolen Lives" (by Malika Oufkir). Both are tales of revolutions in countries that I've never paid much attention to (Morocco and Iran), and the degradation of beautiful, healthy countries into miserable dictatorships. Both are tales of women coming-of-age inside a prison cell. And both tell of the capacity for human beings to survive against all odds. This book will be staying on my shelf.