Deeply reported and quietly devastating ... One of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery ... If the first half of Stolen Revolution traces the consolidation of power, the second turns to the persistence of resistance. Here the book becomes especially alive in its portrait of younger Iranians who experienced the revolution not as a lived memory but as a political inheritance ... If the book has a weakness, it lies in its title. Stolen Revolution implies a cleaner break than the evidence supports ... At times, too, the narrative leans toward inevitability, as though the movement from hope to repression were somehow preordained. But the book itself repeatedly reveals moments when events might have unfolded differently or when public pressure forced lasting concessions, however small.
Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati’s powerful history of the Islamic republic is a badly needed corrective because it is at once an engrossing story and a balanced, meticulously researched primer on modern Iran (the clearest I’ve ever read). And it is dramatic, personal and often heartbreaking ... Stolen Revolution is a careful and unwavering account of the regime’s absurdities and crimes. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about human rights or justice in the Middle East.
Although the structure can be a little uneven and the intermingling stories occasionally confusing, Stolen Revolution is a genuinely remarkable achievement. It deftly blends the political with the personal to create an account of a mafia state and those who resist it that is simultaneously shattering and uplifting. When this rotten-to-its-core regime finally collapses, as it surely will, few will mourn its passing.
Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran offers a riveting insight into the reality and complexity of an often demonised and misunderstood place. A superb collaborative work by Iranian journalist Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, who now lives in the USA, and Yeganeh Torbati, of the New York Times, it illuminates the corruption, cruelty and chaotic mismanagement of this ruthless clerical state ... Reads like a high-octane political drama. By weaving the stories of their protagonists throughout the book, the authors create a rich and immersive portrait of a country riven with factional in-fighting, intransigence and repression, while its increasingly secular population craves an end to isolation from the rest of the world ... An impressive work of investigation, interviewing and analysis.
A nuanced portrayal of a conflicted society and a broad condemnation of key actors, including those who, despite good intentions, 'nonetheless birthed devastation when they sacrificed accountability, political inclusion, and the rule of law.' Recent hostilities only amplify this invaluable book’s urgency.
A portrait of a nation more nuanced, complicated, and promising than the world—and perhaps even its own leaders—have fully appreciated ... A consciousness-changing record of the oppression of extremism lived and resisted at the personal level.
