Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran

by Laura Secor

Overview

“Deeply moving…A first-rate, highly readable intellectual history.” –The Wall Street Journal

The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day.
 
In 1979, seemingly overnight—moving at a clip some thirty years faster than the rest of the world—Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be. They have drawn as deeply on the traditions of the West as of the East and have acted upon their beliefs with urgency and passion, frequently staking their lives for them.
 
With more than a decade of experience reporting on, researching, and writing about Iran, Laura Secor narrates this unprecedented history as a story of individuals caught up in the slipstream of their time, seizing and wielding ideas powerful enough to shift its course as they wrestle with their country’s apparatus of violent repression as well as its rich and often tragic history. Essential reading at this moment when the fates of our countries have never been more entwined, Children of Paradise will stand as a classic of political reporting; an indelible portrait of a nation and its people striving for change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594487101
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/02/2016
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Laura Secor has written about Iran for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, and other publications, and has worked at The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The American Prospect, and Lingua Franca. She has been a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center and the American Academy in Berlin, and has taught journalism at NYU and Princeton. Secor lives in Brooklyn.

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Table of Contents

Map of Iran ix

Preface xi

I Revolution

1 Little Black Fish 3

2 Islamic Republic 22

3 The Period of Constant Contemplation 51

4 Baptism of Blood 82

II Rebirth

5 Expansion and Contraction 107

6 Thermidor 126

7 The Second of Khordad 150

III Reform

8 The Chain Murders 165

9 The Eighteenth of Tir 185

10 Master Plans 212

11 The Miracle Room 234

12 The Spider's House 263

13 Postmortem 314

IV Resistance

14 A Common Man 339

15 Asieh 361

16 The Epic of Dirt and Dust 405

17 The End of the Dirty Wars of Intellectuals 435

Epilogue 460

Acknowledgments 467

Notes 470

Selected Bibliography 489

Index 495

Editorial Reviews

Secor's opposition's-eye journalistic treatment makes for an engaging account of the reform movement in Iran: its ideals, its luminaries, its points of reference.

The New York Times Book Review - Steve Negus

In Children of Paradise, Ms. Secor…indelibly portrays the journalists, dissidents, reformers and student activists who have fought bravely for their ideals in a country where voicing one's beliefs has often led to imprisonment, torture and death…Ms. Secor's portraits create an impressionistic montage of Iranian life during the last 37 years, which is hugely valuable in helping us understand Iran's complex back story…they provide sharp, pinhole windows into a country that for many years has seemed, in her words, like "a black box whose contents were all but unknowable."

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

12/21/2015
This immersive intellectual history will be, for many Western readers, their first encounter with the complex currents of thought that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and continue to fuel Iran’s evolving story today. Journalist Secor delves into the ideas of the Islamic Republic’s varied rulers and intellectuals, as well as those of their pre-revolutionary antecedents. This is no lightweight summary, with topics including the contradictions of the Iranian revolutionary constitution and Austrian-British political theorist Karl Popper’s abiding influence on critics of the Islamic Republic. The theoretical material is interspersed with short biographies of dissident writers, journalists, and activists who are little known outside Iran, despite the brave stands that sent many to jail; those who survived imprisonment were exiled. Secor’s detailed but accessible explanations provide both concrete facts and a general sense that Iranian politics are far more complex than the thumbnail analyses typically provided in Western coverage. She also makes clear, with multiple accounts of violent crackdowns, that almost no one in Iran is safe from its deeply entrenched security state, with writers coming across as particularly vulnerable. Secor’s clear writing offers a firm grounding in the last 40 years of Iranian political thought and the many actions it has inspired in a complicated and fascinating country. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

03/15/2016
Journalist Secor has compiled an incredible set of stories from a variety of individuals in Iran. The men and women—including politicians, journalists, poets—about whom Secor writes have each fought for political change in a country where doing so could prove extremely dangerous. She provides a distinct look into a society that, for most readers, has been nearly closed off to the rest of the world. The stories the author shares are filled with a moving spirit of determination and hope for social change that could result in a more open and accepting society. Her knowledge, attention to detail, and thorough research are immediately apparent. Secor uses her access to Iran in a way that helps to provide a better understanding of the social context behind the current political and economic changes happening within the region. Given the very recent change in relations between Iran and the Western world, Secor's work is an essential read and will help to shed light on the dreams, hardships, and changing views of the individuals who have helped to impact the direction of a nation. VERDICT This timely volume is highly recommended for readers with an interest in current events, sociology, political science, or history.—Brenna Smeall, Bellevue, NE

Library Journal

2015-11-01
A close look at Iranian culture and politics from the 1979 revolution to the present. Journalist Secor, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications, visited Iran five times between 2004 and 2012, interviewing more than 150 Iranians and observing four elections. Those experiences, and many published sources, inform her revealing, often shocking debut book about the turbulent nation perceived by the West as a monolithic threat. The 1979 uprising that ousted the shah "was supposed to yield a just and self-governing" nation; instead, the country fell into "war, want, and profound isolation." Despite having an elected president and parliament, a cleric reigned as "vice-regent of God on earth" and commander of the army. All laws were subject to the approval of this Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Khomeini wielded that power with ferocity against liberals, leftists, and the United States. Nevertheless, some Iranian intellectuals questioned tradition, published widely read critiques, and looked to the West "for its most useful modern ideas while discarding its toxic core." By the fall of 1998, many of these writers "understood that they were living under siege." Within the next few years, writes Secor, "the Islamic Republic was riddled with mafia-like grids that operated in secrecy." In June 2005, the country made a surprising choice for president: the little-known mayor of Tehran, arrogant, swaggering, with a scruffy beard and "goofy grin," who campaigned as a populist: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "a common man, and a demagogue." In matters foreign and domestic, "he smashed things and watched indifferently as others picked up the pieces." Despite all this, Secor feels optimistic about Iran's future, claiming that the nation has a "seemingly endless capacity to produce internal opposition to its own authoritarianism." She characterizes its current president, Hassan Rouhani, as a moderate who wants to foster goodwill toward the West. An insightful chronicle of bloody repression and brave defiance.

Kirkus Reviews

Named a Must-Read by Flavorwire 

“Could not be more timely. … Indelibly portrays the journalists, dissidents, reformers and student activists who have fought bravely for their ideals in a country where voicing one’s beliefs has often led to imprisonment, torture and death. … Secor’s portraits create an impressionistic montage of Iranian life during the last 37 years, which is hugely valuable in helping us understand Iran’s complex back story. … They provide sharp, pinhole windows into a country that for many years has seemed, in her words, like 'a black box whose contents were all but unknowable.' —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“A deeply moving, intimate collection of personal stories...[Secor gives], through extensive interviews with Iranians in the country and in exile, a first-rate, highly readable intellectual history…Ms. Secor is at her very best when she relays the bravery and despair of dissidents, in particular the agony of women who have thrown themselves into the fight…Ms. Secor last visited Iran in 2012. We can hope that she isn’t denied a visa in the future for her truth-telling. If she is, Children of Paradise was worth the price.” —Wall Street Journal

“Democracy is always a work in progress. This point is made crystal clear in journalist Laura Secor’s exhaustively researched book … an insightful view of the evolving intellectual character of a nation that has been largely hidden from us for forty years. … A stellar example of investigative journalism and narrative nonfiction.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Entrancing...In [Secor's] hands, clerics, scholars, and others who helped Iran morph into a republic where mosque and state are inseparable are like larger-than-life character from an epic novel...If beginning to know a people, a country, can help further our appreciation of them, [Children of Paradise is] an important building block.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

“Mesmerizing…Secor captures the extraordinary intellectual and political ferment of a country where millions of people chafe under authoritarian rule...substantive and deeply affecting."—Newsday

“A vibrant panorama of contemporary Iran that doubles as a thorough intellectual and political history of the country’s past four decades…highly accessible.” —Foreign Affairs

“Americans … might take this moment to enjoy Secor’s book to gain a better understanding of Iran’s rich recent history. In it, they will find this lesson: the circle may tighten around intellectual life in Iran, around political progress, and around the complicated heroes who hold down, often unsuccessfully, those barricades—but the ideas that animate these figures and their impulses, the debates behind them, will live on underground, behind closed doors, until it’s time to bloom again. Secor’s story … is a refreshingly Iranian tale—but for us there is this implicit warning: Do not trample this soil and foreclose that next Spring.” —The New Republic

"A thrilling introduction to Iranian culture and the daring intellectuals who have crafted ideological challenges to the rulers of the Islamic Republic." —Shelf Awareness

“Thoughtful political history [that] comprehensive[ly] engage[s] with the social and intellectual complexities that shaped the creation of this modern-day religious state… In visceral detail, Secor describes the political lurches and turns of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the country’s transformation from autocratic fiefdom to a theocratic “democracy.”… Children of Paradise works particularly well because it reaches beyond the documentation of Iran’s turbulent recent history, and succeeds in personifying it.” —Haaretz
                      
"[Children of Paradise] covers a wide array of people, from political thinkers to reformers to revolutionaries, and provides fascinating glimpses and insights into a number of conflicts within Iran, as well as exploring the ideological debates behind them—ones which may have previously made little sense to many Western observers." —Signature Reads

“Secor’s book, which peers inside the 'black box' of a complex theocratic regime over the course of decades, will likely provide grist for arguments on more than one side.” —Flavorwire

“Revealing [and] often shocking… An insightful chronicle of bloody repression and brave defiance.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This immersive intellectual history… offers a firm grounding in the last 40 years of Iranian political thought and the many actions it has inspired in a complicated and fascinating country.” —Publishers Weekly

“An essential read [that] will help to shed light on the dreams, hardships, and changing views of the individuals who have helped to impact the direction of a nation…highly recommended.” —Library Journal

"Anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping post-revolutionary Iran will be rewarded by this intimate and intellectually thrilling portrait. It’s a towering accomplishment."
—Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Thirteen Days in September

"Transcending the political clichés that are often offered as new insights on Iran, this wonderful and timely book provides a glimpse into what Secor calls the 'soul of the matter.' For once the focus is not on the rulers but on those who, with anguish and determination, tried to bring about political change—even as they themselves were transformed—and their desire, above all, to restore and preserve their country's sense of dignity, and their own."
—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination

"Anyone who ever thought of Iran as a monolith must read Children of Paradise, which takes the reader far behind its fearsome caricature. The children referred to in the title are the brilliant dreamers behind the transformative ideology that produced today’s Iran. This is a meticulously reported intellectual history, but much more. Secor doesn’t flinch from depicting the cruelty of the revolutionary republic, but throughout, it is the passion and promise of the people that shines through."
—Barbara Demick, author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

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