The captivating and candid story of a woman who took on the Iranian government and survived, despite every attempt to make...
A leading activist speaks out about inequality and injustices in Iran.
Stripped of her judgeship and demoted to clerk by the Iranian government in 1980, Ebadi (The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny, 2011, etc.) began taking on pro bono cases in the 1990s, defending the rights of children and women in Iran. For this work, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 (the first Muslim woman to do so), but she also came under far more serious scrutiny by the extremist rulers in Iran. With honesty and zeal, the author details how the Iranian government has used all manner of tactics to stop her from defending her clients. She was thrown into jail, her phones were bugged, and she was shadowed and watched by government officials; despite their efforts, she continued to defend those who came to her in need. After years of horrifying harassment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stepped up its efforts and detained Ebadi's daughter. They also increased their persecution of Ebadi's co-workers and other lawyers who also sought to rectify the inequalities so readily evident under the extremist leaders. When none of these tactics forced the author to stop speaking out about the injustices in Iran, the leaders went one step further and set her husband up in a sting operation, which almost caused her to back down. However, she knew if she caved to their demands, then they would have won, which was a situation that she could not tolerate. Ebadi's courage and strength of character are evident throughout this engrossing text, which illuminates the power the few have had over the many, particularly the women and children of Iran.
The captivating and candid story of a woman who took on the Iranian government and survived, despite every attempt to make her fail.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9887-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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