Until We Are Free

Nov 16

Until We Are Free by Shirin Ebadi
Reviewed by Linda
📙📗📕📘📒

If you don’t know who Shirin Ebadi is, then now is the time to find out. The first female Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, who tirelessly fought for human rights in Iran, wrote this fascinating memoir in exile. Loyal to her country, Ebadi was removed from her judicial position by the Iranian authorities under Ahmadinejad’s rule, all because of her gender. This demotion coupled with her family being under constant surveillance and later torment, did not deter her however, but directed her efforts into private practice to defend the under-presented and persecuted members of Iranian society: Baha’is, Sunni muslims, women and children. In 2009, Ebadi began her life in exile but has never once ceased to defend her motherland. I started reading this touching piece with little more than the average person’s knowledge of Iran, but ended up having slightly more of an insight into the authoritarian, invasive and draconian regime that so many of my wonderful Iranian friends and their families have fled from, never to return. Harrowing yet uplifting.

Until We Are FreeShirin EbadiMemoirmiddle eastwomen of colourwriters of colour

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Until We Are Free

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