A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran Author: Visit Amazon's Shane Bauer Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0547985533 | Format: PDF
A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran Description
From Booklist
In this jointly authored memoir, three young, globetrotting journalists recount their two-year imprisonment in Iran. Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd inadvertently hiked into unmarked Iranian territory where they were arrested and taken to a prison to be interrogated. The book details how the three rebelled against captivity by relying on one another for support and coordinating group hunger strikes. The trio describe with forceful detail how, despite frequent moves between prisons, they developed intense and diverse relationships with their captors. Even so, Iranian civil servants accuse the three of entering Iran on behalf of the CIA and Israel. Upon an unexpected release, Sarah uses her newfound celebrity to recruit help to secure the release of Shane and Josh, but this proves difficult and all the more pressing as Shane and Josh’s trial date looms. This engaging story portrays the horrors of imprisonment and the danger that awaits any intrepid traveler who becomes mired between the antipathy of two governments. --Steve Uhrich
Review
"Riveting and necessary and illuminating in countless unexpected ways. The hikers have pulled off the almost impossible task of making from their hellish experience something of beauty and grace." — Dave Eggers
"A Sliver of Light weaves a spellbinding tale of hard-won survival at the intersection of courage and love — the love of friends struggling to support one another in wretched circumstances, the unyielding bedrock of mothers' love for their long-lost children, and the fiercely tested love of three people for the family of humankind. It is a triumph of writing born of a triumph of being." — Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon
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- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 18, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0547985533
- ISBN-13: 978-0547985534
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
"A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned In Iran" by Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal & Sarah Shourd (April 2014).
A story of three young (early 30s) American journalists (take your pick: correspondents, war correspondents, Middle East investigative news reporters, news stringers, etc.) while touring Kurdish-Iraq, take a taxi to an Iraqi city about 20 miles west of the Iranian border, and decide to go for a nature hike towards an allegedly spectacular lake-park region that is nearer the Iranian border. While Josh Fattal & Sarah Shourd believe that they are nearing the Iranian border in July 2009, the more adventurous Shane Bauer (Sarah's boyfriend and future husband) tells them the border is at least 100 miles away and cajoles them eastward.
Oops, while walking down a trail, they see a uniform guard on the adjacent hillside waving them towards him. Instead of turning around, they head towards the apparent border guard, and Iraqi/Kurd border guard most likely, right? Oops, turns out to be an Iranian border guard, who detains them because, well, that what border guards do when they find strangers prowling around their remote areas - gotta make arrest quotas, right? - oops.
One or two of them have "visited Israel" entry stamps on their passports - oops. Bad karma when intruding into a country that regards Israel as the "Little Satan" and the U.S. as the "Great Satan" - oops.
Some distracters have alleged that Bauer was hoping for just a short detention in order to write a scintillating news article, but not realizing that Iranian authorities may not see as much humor with the trio innocently, accidently, blundering into Iran, as their ring-leader Bauer does. Having Jewish names didn't tickle the Iranians' fancy either - oops.
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