Research Catalog

Title

Letters to my torturer : love, revolution, and imprisonment in Iran / Houshang Asadi ; [translation, Nushin Arbabzadah].

Author

Asadi, Houshang, 1950-

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oneworld, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Arbabzadah, Nushin

Description

x, 325 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

Houshang Asadi was a journalist, writer, and translator who, under the Shah's regime, was a prison cellmate of Ali Khamenei (appointed successor to the Ayatollah Khomeini). After Asadi's arrest in 1983 in a crackdown on opposition parties, the prominent Iranian journalist spent the next six years being brutally tortured by "Brother Hamid." "After 682 days in solitary confinement, subjected to every deprivation, my 'confessions' were used, in a show trial lasting just six minutes, to sentence me to fifteen years in prison," the author recounts. Yet he was released with other surviving political prisoners on the anniversary of the revolution in 1989, and was able to escape Iran in 2003, living in exile since then. This book is a series of letters addressed to his torturer.

Subject

• Asadi, Houshang, 1950-
• 1979-1997
• Political prisoners > Iran > Biography
• Torture victims > Iran > Biography
• Journalists > Iran > Biography
• Torture > Iran
• Iran > Politics and government > 1979-1997

Genre/Form

• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• Autobiographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Two Articles of the Constitution -- 2. Iran of Those Days: The Age of Compassion -- 3. Kissing the Hand of Khomeini -- 4. In the Shah's Prison with Mr Khamenei -- 5. Playing "Full or Empty" with Mehdi Karroubi -- 6. As Always There's a Woman Involved -- 7. How I became a Spy for MI6 -- 8. Bakhtiar's Le Monde, Khomeini's Sandals of Despotism -- 9. Kharnenei Kianuri: Political Ping pong -- 10. I used to be Ahmadinejad's Torturer! -- 11. Kabul a Few Days after the Red Army's Arrival -- 12. Defending Khomeini in the Heart of Moscow -- 13. Visiting the Dead -- 14. Drinking Hard Liquor in the Islamic Torture Chamber -- 15. Woof, Woof. I am a Spy -- 16. Coup and the Bullshitters -- 17. Night of the Coup -- 18. Return from the Grave -- 19. My Wife's Voice and her Eyes -- 20. Sex in the Torture Chamber -- 21. Goodbye to Moshtarek Prison, Hello to Evin -- 22. Ghezel Hesar Prison and Stalin's Massacre -- 23. Purgatory in Hell -- 24. Genocide in the Islamic Republic -- 25. Gallows and Mass Murder -- 26. Iran of Today: The Reign of Thugs.

ISBN

• 9781851687503
• 1851687505
• 9781851687831 (export pbk.)
• 1851687831 (export pbk.)

OCLC

• 471812338
• SCSB-11400484

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library