"Ervand Abrahamian's cogent and engrossing history of imprisonment and resistance, drawing on a wealth of prisoner literature and testimony, chronicles the continuities and ruptures of modern Iran from the vantage points of its shackled dissidents. Readers will encounter some extraordinarily heroic men and women in this account of how Iran came to practice the techniques of ideological discipline and punishment characteristic of Inquisition Spain and Stalin's Soviet Union. Abrahamian shows how the government's mass media ...
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"Ervand Abrahamian's cogent and engrossing history of imprisonment and resistance, drawing on a wealth of prisoner literature and testimony, chronicles the continuities and ruptures of modern Iran from the vantage points of its shackled dissidents. Readers will encounter some extraordinarily heroic men and women in this account of how Iran came to practice the techniques of ideological discipline and punishment characteristic of Inquisition Spain and Stalin's Soviet Union. Abrahamian shows how the government's mass media production of forced recantations backfired by prompting Iranians to confront the mass-scale torture used to extract them and to ask what kind of state would inflict these horrors on its citizens."--Joe Stork, Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch, Middle East and North Africa Division
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