In the early days of the fundamentalist revolution in Iran, a seventeen-year-old girl is arrested because of her brother's involvement with leftist politics. She is placed in a makeshift jail, a former bathhouse, in which other women are also being held captive.
With intense emotion and great literary skill, Moshiri gives voice to these prisoners, exploring their torment and struggle, but also their courage and humanity, in the face of tyrants.
Based on interviews with real women who have been imprisoned, Farnoosh Moshiri's novel is a gripping and moving narrative of oppression, injustice, and the human spirit.
Moshiri's novella is set in Iran in the early days of the Islamic revolution and is narrated by a 17-year-old girl who is arrested because of her brother's political activism. The girl is held in an old bathhouse-turned-prison, where other inmates are routinely tortured and executed. Bernadette Dunne's narration of the young woman's ordeal is rendered poignantly. Her delivery is emotional--the pain and despair of the characters are present in her voice in just the right amounts. The story is unrelentingly depressing, and it might have been tempting for the Dunne to give in to melodrama, but she uses better judgment, and the results make the book easier to listen to than it might be to read. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Tacoma News Tribune...
[A] gut-wrenching, eye-opening novel. The Bathhouse shows what happens when ideology runs amok. It honors the humanity and sacrifice of the victims.
About the Author
Farnoosh Moshiri was born into a literary family in Tehran. She earned an M.A. in drama from the University of Iowa and returned to Iran in 1979. After refusing to sign an agreement to obey the new regime, she went underground, escaping to Afghanistan and then India. She eventually graduated from the creative writing program of the University of Houston. The author of At the Wall of the Almighty, she currently teaches at Montgomery College in Houston, Texas.
