Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir

Parsipur (Touba and the Meaning of Night) originally published this prison memoir in Persian as Khatirat-i Zindan, in 1996. Translator Khalili offers the first English version. The author lived through the Iranian revolution of 1979 and witnessed the country's transformation from monarchy to theocracy. Prior to the uprising, Parsipur served as a television and radio producer. In this book, Parsipur recounts the brutality she suffered while she was imprisoned by Iran's new regime and held for nearly five years without being charged. She describes her life as a political prisoner subjected to mental torture, witness to mass executions, and robbed of her dignity at the hands of a paranoid government bent on stifling dissent by terrorizing its citizenry. Where others may have been silenced, Parsipur boldly decided to write about her experiences. Her books have been banned in her native country, and she now lives in exile in Northern California.