The author’s parents were working in Iran in the late ’70s as Christian missionaries when the Iranian Revolution occurred. A look back on their experience: The community of expats was dwindling. Every week more people left, the congregation of the church smaller every Sunday. Dave’s Jewish colleague left the university in November, telling him, “It’s […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
How We Survived Two Years of Hell As Hostages in Tehran
Three Americans recount their experience of being held captive in Iran’s Evin Prison after unknowingly crossing the Iraq-Iran border while out on a hike. An excerpt from A Sliver of Light, a co-written book about their ordeal: SHANE (October 2009) Solitary confinement is the slow erasure of who you thought you were. You think you […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Missing American, on an Unapproved Mission for the CIA
An Associated Press investigation reveals that Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran and has become the longest-held American hostage, was working for the CIA at the time of his disappearance, despite denials by the U.S. government. The full story of how it all happened: In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Nonfiction
The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life
Stephen Rodrick | The Magical Stranger | 2014 | 11 minutes (2,779 words) Below is the first chapter from The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick’s memoir about his father, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick. Our thanks to Rodrick for sharing it with the Longreads community.
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Nonfiction, Story
The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life
Stephen Rodrick | The Magical Stranger | 2014 | 11 minutes (2,779 words) Below is the first chapter from The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick’s memoir about his father, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick. Our thanks to Rodrick for sharing it with the Longreads community.
Posted inUncategorized
“Her Husband Had Taken Their Young Daughter To Iran. She Was Determined To Get The Child Back,” Del Quentin Wilber, The Washington Post.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Her Husband Had Taken Their Young Daughter To Iran. She Was Determined To Get The Child Back.
A case of international parental kidnapping, and a mother’s fight to get her daughter back: “To make the plan work, Homaune had to take on a new persona in conversations with her ex-husband. She tried to be calm, helpful and understanding, and mailed him just enough cash, medicine and clothes to keep him interested in […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons
The writer, a former American prisoner in Iran, goes inside America’s prisons and examines the solitary confinement system. He discovers “a recipe for abuse and violation rights”: “As I read the medical literature, I remember the violent fantasies that sometimes seized my mind so fully that not even meditation—with which I luckily had a modicum […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Scariest Little Corner of the World
A look at the city of Zaranj, near the Iran-Afghanistan border, where Afghan migrant workers are smuggled into and deported from Iran: “A few years ago, Iran designated the province that borders Nimruz a ‘no go’ area for foreign residents and shortly thereafter began erecting a 15-foot-high concrete wall that now runs more than half […]
