Bahari Maziar Books

In June 2009, Maziar Bahari left London to cover Iran’s presidential election, promising his pregnant fiancée, Paola, he’d return in a few days. Unbeknownst to him, he would spend the next three months in Evin Prison, enduring brutal interrogations from a man known only by his scent: Rosewater. The Bahari family has faced the harsh realities of wars and revolutions for generations; Maziar’s father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. Alone in his cell, Maziar draws strength from the courage of his father and sister, hearing their voices across time. He dreams of Paola in London and imagines his resilient eighty-four-year-old mother campaigning for his release. During his harrowing encounters with Rosewater, he silently repeats the names of his loved ones, seeking their strength and praying for release in time for his child's birth. This riveting memoir provides insight into seventy years of regime change in Iran, highlighting the clash between the democratic aspirations of the youth and an increasingly totalitarian government. It is a moving account of one family’s extraordinary courage in the face of repression. Now a major motion picture directed by Jon Stewart, it was previously published as Then They Came for Me.