Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran

A moving and harrowing portrait of the lives of Iranians across five decades, tracing the promise of the 1979 Iranian revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy, and a people’s undying spirit of resistance

"One of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years."
—The New York Times Book Review

"The best book to understand Iran today. . . . impossible to put down."
—EDWARD FISHMAN, author of Chokepoints

"A masterwork of reporting. . . . a kind of skeleton key for understanding the present moment."
—JONATHAN BLITZER, author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

In 1979, a revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fueled by the Iranian people’s dreams of social justice and political freedom. But in the years that followed, the movement’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond imagination the brutality and corruption that had existed under the previous government. In Stolen Revolution, award-winning journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin tell the entwined stories of six Iranians who, together, have lived the arc of modern Iranian history in all its bitter twists and enduring hopes.

We meet Mehdi Karroubi, a devotee of Khomeini, who rose to the heights of power before being cast out of the inner circle. Hila Sedighi, a young activist, gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes and shattered dreams. Amir Moghadam, an ambitious government bureaucrat, witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth. Said Rahmani returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country and encountered a ruthless security state. And Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari, both born in the 1990s, joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. All have paid an enormous price for resisting the government’s strangling rule.

Today, Iran is caught between crisis and hope. In this vivid and unforgettable narrative, Stolen Revolution centers ordinary Iranians and their destiny, and conveys a gutting view of life in a modern authoritarian state.