*This is not a spoiler-free review*
The Prisoner of Tehran is a very good book, extremely well written. However not recommended to children for the cruelty and violence inflicted upon certain people.
Marina Nemat was and still is a very brave and strong-willed young woman/girl, and I do not doubt for one moment that the facts are all correct. However I must say that I feel like the over-all story and most characters are a little too perfect.
A young girl, Marina, is unfairly imprisoned and tortured. She suffers loss, making the reader feel sorry for Marina, to whom you grow attached for there is no good realistic story without any casualties. Then Ali, one of the very high-placed guards happens to fall in love with this political prisoner, his supposedly sworn enemy whom he has never even met. He frees her and professes his love to her. He threatens to hurt her loved ones if she refuses to marry him, knowing she will not instead kill herself because she is the brave teenager, rebelling against her oppressing government. She consents, in order to protect those she loves, making Ali a very interesting character. Villain? Hero? Who can say, it’s up to the reader to decide. Perhaps he is most likely a bit of both; a heroic villain. Rather similar to the character of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter books, who is torn between his love for a woman and his loyalty towards Voldemort and the Death Eaters, here the Iranian government. In the end, Snape dies, trying to protect the woman he loves’ son, because he was not there to protect her, just like Ali, who dies protecting Marina – dying heroes whose love is unrequited.
In the end, Marina is freed and reunited with her family, although there is a new-found distance which shall never be replaced. She marries the love of her life, Andre, even though it is against the law, and she is already under suspicion from her previous imprisonment. Luckily for her, she has friends who defend her so that she may stay married with Andre. They both move to a safer place, Canada, with their two children, and live happily ever after.
Nemat decides to write a book from her good, safe home in Canada for several reasons, one of which being her memories of Evin haunt her sleep. Her shocking auto-biography was, probably subconsciously, directed toward a more Western audience, rather than her fellow Evin prisoners.
The story and some of the characters seem a little too perfect, as I said earlier, and seem rather romanticized.
However I still think The Prisoner of Tehran is worth reading, for it is interesting and makes you think about our society and its rules, and how some of us should consider ourselves lucky to live in a mostly wealthy, modern and developed country (France, in my case).