A portrait of the lives of Iranians across five decades, tracing the promise of the 1979 Iranian revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy, and a people’s undying spirit of resistance.
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.
