Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran

A journalist, writer, and translator, Houshang Asadi was a member of both the Writers' Association of Iran and the Iranian Journalists' Syndicate, and the co-founder of the Association of Iranian Film Critics and Script Writers. Prior to the Islamic Revolution he served for many years as Deputy Editor at Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper, and was for twelve years the Editor-in-Chief of the country's largest-circulation film magazine, Gozaresh. He is the author of several novels, plays, and film scripts, and has translated into Persian important works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and T.S. Eliot. Shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and following the new government's crackdown on all opposition parties, Asadi was arrested once again. He was kept in solitary confinement for almost two years and severely tortured, until he falsely confessed to operating as a spy for the British and Russian governments. His sentence was death by hanging. In the end this was reduced to 15 years imprisonment. After 6 years he was freed and eventually escaped Iran in 2003. He now lives in exile in Paris with his wife, where he co-founded the influential Persian-language news website Rooz Online.