Both a love story and a reporter’s first draft of history, Honeymoon in Tehran is a stirring, trenchant, and deeply personal chronicle of two years in the maelstrom of Iranian life.

In 2005, Azadeh Moaveni, longtime Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, returns to Iran to cover the rise of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As she documents the firebrand leader’s troublesome entry onto the world stage, Moaveni richly portrays a society too often caricatured as the heartland of militant Islam. Living and working in Tehran, she finds a nation that openly yearns for freedom and contact with the West, but whose economic grievances and nationalist spirit find a temporary outlet in Ahmadinejad’s strident pronouncements. Mingling with underground musicians, race car drivers, young radicals, and scholars, she explores the cultural identity crisis and class frustration that pits Iran’s next generation against the Islamic system.

And then the unexpected happens: Azadeh falls in love with a young Iranian man and decides to get married and start a family in Tehran. Suddenly, she finds herself navigating an altogether different side of Iranian life. Preparing to be wed by a mullah, she sits in on a government marriage prep class where young couples are instructed to enjoy sex. She visits Tehran’s bridal bazaar and finds that the Iranian wedding has become an outrageously lavish–though often still gender-segregated–production. When she becomes pregnant, she must prepare to give birth in an Iranian hospital, at the same time observing her friends’ struggles with their young children, who must learn to say one thing at home and another at school.

Despite her busy schedule as a wife and mother, Azadeh continues to report for Time on Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West and Iranians’ dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad’s heavy-handed rule. But as women are arrested on the street for “immodest dress” and the authorities unleash a campaign of intimidation against journalists, the country’s dark side reemerges. This fundamentalist turn, along with the chilling presence of “Mr. X,” the government agent assigned to mind her every step, forces Azadeh to make the hard decision that her family’s future lies outside Iran.

Powerful and poignant, fascinating and humorous Honeymoon in Tehran is the harrowing story of a young woman’s tenuous life in a country she thought she could change.


From the Hardcover edition.

The author of Lipstick Jihad describes her return to Iran as a reporter for Time magazine in the wake of the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, her marriage to an Iranian man, the repressive Iranian society and its impact, and her family's decision to leave Iran. Simultaneous.

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The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work.

Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi – raped, tortured and murdered in Iran – Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home.

Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero.

Her memoir is a gripping story – a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi's case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world.


From the Hardcover edition.

È il 2000 quando Shirin Ebadi viene a sapere di essere sulla lista dei condannati a morte dal regime di Teheran. L'avvocato iraniano, premio Nobel per la pace nel 2003, prende le mosse dal racconto di questa amara scoperta per ripercorrere le tappe principali della propria vita professionale e privata e, insieme, dipingere un vivido ritratto della sua patria negli ultimi trent' anni. Animata dalla profonda convinzione che l'Islam possa essere interpretato in modo positivo per trasformare il futuro dell'Iran, Shirin Ebadi racconta come sia riuscita a dare voce a chi è sempre stato costretto a tacere e ha visto i propri diritti usurpati dall'ostile teocrazia che governa il Paese.

Questo libro è il ritratto, ironico e provocatorio, della 'lost generation' iraniana. Nati all'indomani della rivoluzione khomeinista, i trentenni di Teheran contrabbandano film proibiti, alcol, haschisch, sesso e vestiti all'ultima moda, vanno pazzi per le pop-star americane e sfruttano ogni pretesto per fare casino. Ma quello che li muove non è solo il sogno di uno stile di vita 'occidentale'; per loro, infatti, trasgressione fa rima con rivoluzione.