Synopses & Reviews
In the summer of 2009, as she was covering the popular uprisings in Tehran for the
New York Times, Iranian journalist Nazila Fathi received a phone call. They have given your photo to snipers,” a government source warned her. Soon after, with undercover agents closing in, Fathi fled the country with her husband and two children, beginning a life of exile.
In The Lonely War, Fathi interweaves her story with that of the country she left behind, showing how Iran is locked in a battle between hardliners and reformers that dates back to the countrys 1979 revolution. Fathi was nine years old when that uprising replaced the Iranian shah with a radical Islamic regime. Her father, an official at a government ministry, was fired for wearing a necktie and knowing English; to support his family he was forced to labor in an orchard hundreds of miles from Tehran. At the same time, the familys destitute, uneducated housekeeper was able to retire and purchase a modern apartmentall because her family supported the new regime.
As Fathi shows, changes like these caused decades of inequalityespecially for the poor and for womento vanish overnight. Yet a new breed of tyranny took its place, as she discovered when she began her journalistic career. Fathi quickly confronted the upper limits of opportunity for women in the new Iran and earned the enmity of the countrys ruthless intelligence service. But while she and many other Iranians have fled for the safety of the West, millions of their middleclass countrymenmany of them the same people whom the regime once lifted out of povertycontinue pushing for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world.
Drawing on over two decades of reporting and extensive interviews with both ordinary Iranians and high-level officials before and since her departure, Fathi describes Irans awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are steadily retaking the country.
Review
In short and lucid chapters...Ms. Fathi conveys the experiences of people from different walks of life and intersperses these accounts with observations about how the new Islamic revolutionary ideology was conceived, anticipated, received and resisted. Her portraits of the womens rights activists Faezeh Hashemi and Shahla Sherkat make for fascinating reading. So do her accounts of other courageous Iranian women.... Ms. Fathis book is a testament to her courage and to the brave struggles of many Iranians who continue to live there with patience, hope and determination.”
New York Times
A revealing and often exhilarating portrait of [Fathis] life as a female reporter in the Islamic Republic.”
Wall Street Journal
A personal and experiential account of how changes in the internecine politics of Iran since the revolution have affected the lives of millions. Fathis supremely accessible narrative is an excellent primer for those who want to understand the machinations of the regime; hers is a brave and important voice.”
Washington Post
Fathi distills three decades of Iranian politics through a personal lens in her unputdownable memoir.”
Vogue.com
Paints a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reinvent itself after years of oppression.”
Shelf Awareness
An invaluable contribution to our understanding of current Iranian political and cultural dynamics, the driving forces behind Iranian foreign policy, and the challenges the country is likely to face in the near future.”
Foreign Policy Association
Vivid and compelling
Fathi recounts in exquisite detail three decades in pre and post-1979 Iran revealing the inherent contradictions at the heart of life after the revolution.”
The Guardian (UK)
Fathi offers a masterful telling of her countrys modern history.”
New York Journal of Books
With dazzling frankness and authenticity.... Fathi shows the reality faced by Iranian citizens throughout the last 30 years of political upheaval in the country. [M]ultifaceted and incredibly informative.... Readers of history and politics will revel in the accurate reporting of a veteran journalist and lovers of human interest stories will feel gratified to know Fathi so personally. This educational, emotionally enthralling read about a country many Americans know only a little about is a must-read.”
Library Journal, starred review
Pertinent and timely.”
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Moving
The book intertwines [Fathis] personal experiences of marriage and motherhood with the major events of the period.”
Al-Monitor
In a skilful balance of personal history and academic research, Fathi brings to life the complex social, economic and political upheaval of the transition from the shah of Iran's western-oriented, oil-drunk secular society, to the Ayatollah Khomeini's vision of a cloistered Shiite Islamic republic.... A detailed, vivid chronicle of three decades of oppression, complex power struggle and, as Fathi makes clear, a people who will not be silenced. An important, highly enjoyable contribution to the understanding of modern Iran.”
Winnipeg Free Press
[Fathis] sharp new memoir, The Lonely War, reveals an expert understanding of the motivations of Irans tangled, self-contradictory religious and political leadership. A well-told story about Irans ongoing resistance to faith-based oppression.”
Washington City Paper
[A] gripping account
This is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of modern Iran.”
Booklist
Readers keeping an eye on the contemporary Middle East will learn much from Fathi's travels and observations.”
Kirkus Reviews
Richly informative and insightfula wonderful book and a great read.”
Leila Ahmed, author of A Border Passage: From Cairo to AmericaA Woman's Journey
Nazila Fathis The Lonely War is both a touching personal story that illuminates the struggles of life in Iran and a broader reflection on the sociopolitical effects of the Islamic revolution on the Iranian people. With so much misinformation about Iran in the national discourse, Fathis book is a valuable resource for anyone looking to read beyond the headlines.”
Hooman Majd, author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran
Nazila Fathis riveting story of growing up under the Islamic Revolution and becoming one of the country's finest women journalists is told with passion and deep intelligence. A powerful read that sheds much needed light on Irans enduring contradictions, The Lonely War is at once an intimate memoir of an Iranian who struggled to remake her country from within, and a chilling glimpse into how the state silences its critics.”
Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran
Drawing on more than a decade of reporting for the New York Times in Iran, Nazila Fathi has written a lucid and highly engaging portrait of Iranian politics from the 1979 revolution to today. One of the books most illuminating features is her vivid portrait of the impoverished recruits for the paramilitary Basij and Revolutionary Guard Corpsincluding their subsequent disillusionment and adoption of a more middle class, secular life style. Highly recommended for college courses.”
Janet Afary, author of Sexual Politics in Modern Iran
As fearless as it is honest, The Lonely War tells the inside story of how Iranians have grappled withand also been inspired bytheir Islamic Republic. Journalist Nazila Fathi gives us a powerful personal account of coming of age in revolutionary Iran, exploring Irans turbulent modern history through a remarkable cast of real characters and deftly navigating Irans cultural and political divide to provide us a superb picture of what makes Iran today.”
Scott Peterson, author of Let the Swords Encircle Me: IranA Journey Behind the Headlines
The Lonely War reveals a new Nazila Fathi: not just the intrepid New York Times correspondent, but also a woman struggling through life in turbulent Iran. This book, like Marjane Satrapis Persepolis, mixes the personal with the political against a backdrop of war and revolution. Provocative, moving, insightful, and full of scary characters, The Lonely War takes us deep inside one of the worlds most fascinating societies.”
Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shahs Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
A poignant portrait of Irans tortured contemporary history through the eyes of one of the countrys most thoughtful and courageous journalists.”
Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A provocative first-hand account of how the Iranian middle class survived the Islamic revolution, eventually rising like the phoenix from the ashes to claim its place in society and politics. Insightful, empathetic, and gripping, this is a story of a nations despair and hope and a window onto what the future holds for Iran.”
Vali Nasr, author of Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat
Synopsis
As a nine-year-old Tehrani schoolgirl during the Iranian Revolution, Nazila Fathi watched her country change before her eyes. The revolutionariesmost of them poor, uneducated, and radicalizedseized jobs, housing, and positions of power, transforming Iranian society practically overnight. But this socioeconomic revolution had an unintended effect. As Fathi shows, the forces unleashed in 1979 inadvertently created a robust Iranian middle class, one that today hungers for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world. And unless an international confrontation allows Iranian leaders to justify an internal crackdown, this internal pressure for reform will soon set the country on a more stable track.
In The Lonely War, Fathi describes Irans awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are retaking the countryand how foreign powers can aid their progress.
About the Author
Nazila Fathi worked for two decades as an Iranian correspondent for The New York Times before being forced to flee the country in 2009 at the height of the Green Revolution. Currently a writer for NPR and Foreign Policy and a commentator for Persian Language Voice of America television, she has held fellowships at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvards Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, and Harvards Nieman Foundation, as well as at Lund University in Sweden. Fathi holds an MA in Political Science and Womens Studies from the University of Toronto. A frequent guest on BBC, CNN, NPR, and Fox News, she has also written for The New York Review of Books, Time, CNN.com, Agence France-Presse, Harvard's Nieman Reports, and the online news outlets openDemocracy and GlobalPost.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Surveillance
Part One: The Formative Years, 1979–1989
1. The Revolution
2. Nessa
3. The Time of Horror
4. World Powers Did It!”
5. The Cleansing
6. The War
7. Our Bodies, Our Battlefields
8. Masoud
9. The War Ends
Part Two: Awakening, 1989–1999
10. After Khomeini
11. Meeting a Hawk
12. The Intelligence Ministry
13. The War Revisited
14. The Walls Come Crashing Down
15. Nessa Mourns
16. A Force for Change
17. Reform
18. The Regime Strikes Back
Part Three: The Decades of Confrontation, 1999–2009
19. The Performers Speak Out
20. No Fear of Authority
21. The Good” Children of the Revolution
22. The Bad” Children of the Revolution
23. Nasrin
24. The Rising Tide
25. End of an Era
26. Exile
Epilogue