Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran مقالة

Shahla Talebi’s memoir, Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Im- prisonment in Iran, is painful to read; it is hard to read. The book, a recol- lection of Shahla Talebi’s years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, is jail-like itself ‒ unrelenting in stark accounts of torture, murders, madness, and mayhem. Four out of six chapters are named after prisoners: Roya, Fozi, Kobra, Maryam, and one after a cousin, Yousuf. Upon her temporary release from prison in November 1991, Shahla Talebi visits the cemetery, where her murdered husband’s body is presumed to be buried in a mass grave (29‒30). Fozi, a collaborator ‒ a young woman who broke under torture ‒ is hated by the guards, the prisoners, and her own family. Despite Shahla Talebi’s horror, the reader feels pity for Fozi, even if she is a traitor. Nevertheless, Shahla Talebi’s firsthand account of prison life in Evin is a valuable historical documentation of Iranian government’s bru- tality of its citizens.