Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth - A Memoir of Iran

by Camelia Entekhabifard

Book Overview

Camelia Entekhabifard was six years old in 1979 when the shah of Iran was overthrown by revolutionary supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. By the age of sixteen, Camelia was a nationally celebrated poet, and at eighteen she was one of the youngest reformist journalists in Tehran. Just eight years later she was imprisoned, held in solitary confinement, and charged with breaching national security and challenging the authority of the Islamic regime...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583227199
• ISBN13: 9781583227190
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A top pick for any general-interest or college-level collection

Camelia was six years old when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in her country: her family chose to stay in Tehran and saw two decades of violent change which affected their family. CAMELIA is for any who would understand the culture and politics of Iran: its autobiography recounts the author's life in the country, where she was a nationally celebrated poet as a teen, one of the youngest reformist journalists in Tehran by eighteen, and imprisoned eight years later. Her relationship with brutal interrogators, her ultimate survival and her struggle coping with freedom makes for a haunting document of repression which is a top pick for any general-interest or college-level collection strong in Middle East culture and history. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

A brutally honest and vivid account

"Camelia" is the vivid, moving, and candid memoir of Camelia Entekhabi-fard, a young Iranian journalist intimately familiar with the social and political turmoil of Iran under the Islamic Republic. Ms Entekhabi-fard's story takes us from her childhood and adolescence, to her career as a journalist and active participant in the Iranian reform movement, through encounters with famous and infamous personalities, to her imprisonment, release, and exile. Her keen observations and deep sympathy illuminate the complex cultural and political problems of Iran, particularly its young women, and bring to life some of the key events of the past thirty years. But what makes "Camelia" stand out among contemporary Middle East memoirs is Ms Entekhabi-fard's brutal honesty, particularly towards the moral dilemmas and personal choices she made in her struggle to succeed and survive. Her fierce candor will undoubtedly shock some readers, but it makes "Camelia" a refreshingly frank, lively, and moving memoir.