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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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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