Until We Are Free

'POWERFUL AND SOMETIMES SHOCKING ...' SUNDAY TIMES

In this powerful book, Dr Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights lawyer and activist, tells of her fight for reform inside Iran, and the devastating backlash she faced after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Having fought tirelessly for democracy, equality before the law and freedom of speech, Ebadi became a global voice of inspiration. Yet, inside her own country, her life has been plagued by surveillance, intimidation and violence.

Until We Are Free tells shocking stories of how the Iranian authorities eventually forced her into exile. Her sister and daughter were detained, her husband was enmeshed in an espionage plot with another woman, her Nobel medal was stolen from her safety deposit box, and her offices in Tehran were ransacked.

An illuminating depiction of life in Iran today as well as the account of Ebadi's personal struggle to uphold her work and keep her family together, Until We Are Free is ultimately a work of hope and perseverance under circumstances of exceptional difficulty.

Dr. Shirin Ebadi was one of Iran’s first female judges and served as the first female chief magistrate of one of the country’s highest courts until the 1979 Islamic Revolution stripped her of her judgeship. In the 1990s Ebadi returned to the law as a defender of women’s and children’s rights, founding a human rights center that spearheaded legal reform and public debate around the Islamic Republic’s discriminatory laws. She has defended many of the country’s most prominent prisoners of conscience and spent nearly a month in prison in 1999 for her activities. For many years she was at the center of Iran’s grassroots women’s movement. In 2003 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Since the election uprising of June 2009 she has lived in exile.