‘I want my pink shoes!’ writes Zarah Ghahramani in her memoir My Life as a Traitor. This statement may seem frivolous, even silly, but it sums up the core of this book: the right to chose, to make one’s own decisions, the right to be free. ‘The state expected that I would understand things in the way it prescribed; but my family, especially my father, urged on me an alternative way of seeing the world around me.’ Thus begins Ghahramani’s story. After taking part in student demonstrations, Ghahramani is kidnapped off the streets of Tehran and sent to Evin prison. She is held there for 29 days, interrogated, tortured and raped. She is eventually released after signing a ‘confession’. Ghahramani’s account of her time in Evin is honest, shocking and at times funny. She reveals a deep love, as well as frustration, for her country. Behind the headscarf is an intelligent, fierce and determined woman, prepared to challenge conventional ideas and fight for freedom at any cost—and she is not alone. Under the Ayatollah’s harsh regime it is the women who suffer the most and they, like Ghahramani, are strong, free-thinking women who wish for love and freedom.

Esther van Doornum is a freelance writer and works as a bookseller at Readings, Carlton

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

Tags: zarah ghahramani & robert hillman