Stolen Revolution

'Rare and riveting . . . Powerful personal stories are woven together to provide new insight and understanding' LYSE DOUCET

A must-read for anyone seeking an honest appraisal of revolutionary Iran and the bloody twists and turns of its theocratic regime . . . compulsively readable . . . unputdownable JON LEE ANDERSON

The moving, riveting and immersive story of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history: the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by the Islamic mafia state and a people s undying spirit of resistance.

Fuelled by Iranians dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah s ailing, repressive monarchy. But in its place the revolution s leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes built a system that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah. Award-winning journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope:

Mehdi Karroubi: a devotee of Khomeini, he rose to the heights of power on the wave of the revolution, before being cast out of its inner circle.

Hila Sedighi: a young activist, who gave voice through her poetry to her peers hopes during the reform years and ultimately immortalised their shattered dreams.

Amir Moghadam: an ambitious government bureaucrat, who witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth.

Said Rahmani: a successful global tech entrepreneur who returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country, and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself.

Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari: both born in the 1990s, they escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran, where they joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price.

Through vivid and original reporting, Stolen Revolution offers a compulsively readable new story of Iran, centring ordinary Iranians lives, whilst providing a visceral understanding of how life is actually lived under a modern authoritarian state. This is a harrowing story of power, corruption and greed and those brave individuals who fought back.

'Profoundly affecting . . . One of the most incisive works on Iranian society in a generation' SCOTT ANDERSON, author of KING OF KINGS

'Excellent . . . tells the tragic but often inspiring story of Iran over the last fifty years . . . Essential' JASON BURKE, author of THE REVOLUTIONISTS

Stolen Revolution is a captivating read . . . Sharafedin and Torbati's intimate storytelling makes you feel like you have the rare privilege of really knowing the six Iranian protagonists YUAN YANG, author of PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS