While we may be exposed to the horrors of war and hatred on 30-second news broadcasts, these are blips in our lives that don’t engage us. That’s why this book is a slap in the face.

Ex-prisoner and first-time author Marina Nemat, skillfully tells her horrific story of being a political prisoner in Evin, Iran’s most notorious prison in this unpretentious autobiography. Reading Nemat’s book is like reading the diary of a long-lost friend. Her honesty and her heart came through each sentence so strongly that the story of her life was spell-binding. She criticises herself with as much conviction as the way she defends her beliefs.

She was only 16 in 1982, when Iran was in a state of revolution. Marina, being a Christian in a dominantly Islamic country, felt like a fish in waters infested with sharks,  fanatical sharks that would do anything for their religion. Revolutionary guards showed up one night and arrested her for, what she described as “activities against the Islamic government” after she unintentionally sparked off a strike in her school. Tortured and sentenced to death, Marina saw her life slipping away, but her spirit stayed strong.

Marina was practically glaring down the barrel of the gun of her executor when she was suddenly saved by one of her interrogators called Ali. But she soon found that her life was spared in exchange for her freedom. Ali had fallen in love with her and wanted her as his wife. Marina eventually consented, under threat of having her family and true love executed, to marry him and was forced to convert to Islam because of the marriage.

Marina then began her new life under a different kind of life sentence. She was raped repeatedly by her husband and forced to wear a chador (a piece of outer clothing worn by Islamic Iranian women).

However, whether it was the hints of goodness that occasionally surfaced in Ali or the kindness his family showed Marina, her marriage to Ali proved to be easier to read than it seemed to be, with some parts even nearing the point of endearing. An especially moving moment was when he cried because he thought she had run away from him when she had actually gone for a walk. Ali’s love for Marina was so surprisingly strong that you really wonder how someone who could be so cruel and so loving at the same time. He was tender for most of the time and never stopped trying to make her happy. What’s more, later on we find out that he wasn’t all that different from her after all. We also learn that sometimes, people who seem evil are not as bad as they seem, but are just doing what they think is right.

It is the ability to understand both sides of the situation and not be blinded by hate that earns the book and its author credibility.

Through both Marina’s insightful reflections and her vivid descriptions of her memories, she has written a book that compels the reader to turn the page. Moreover, it forces the reader to face serious issues that are happening in the world today, primarily religious strife in countries with a predominant religion and terrorism happening not just outside of Muslim countries but inside as well. This book also shows that an uncompromising belief in your faith even after converting to another and never letting go of your inner strength can save your life in the harshest environments albeit, for Marina, this happened in a very unexpected way.

The book is also well-timed. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, who died in 2003 after being brutally beaten, tortured and raped by guards in Evin, opened the world’s eyes to the horrors that were going on in Iran’s most notorious prison. And now that the world is listening, Marina has written a haunting memoir of her life in Evin as well as of the lives of many others who had suffered in the prison.

Let us hope that Marina’s and Zahra’s voices will help thousands to finally move on from the atrocities that they have gone through as well as raise awareness internationally of the suffering and cruelty many civilians have to go through during times of war and revolution.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Prisoner of Tehran: The End of Childhood in Iran by Marina Nemat is available at all good bookstores.