The New York Times Book Review - Steve Negus
Secor's opposition's-eye journalistic treatment makes for an engaging account of the reform movement in Iran: its ideals, its luminaries, its points of reference.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
In Children of Paradise, Ms. Secor…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…Ms. 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."
Publishers Weekly - Audio
07/04/2016
Marno gives us the clear, straightforward narration this fine book deserves. The film and TV actress knows how to dramatize scenes of daring dissident and reformist uprisings as well as emotional descriptions of horror, torture, and death within the context of a nonfiction book. Journalist Secor has written numerous articles on Iran over many years and bases her book on this meticulous research. The book isn't focussed on Iran's leaders since the 1979 revolution or the role of the U.S., but on its political, religious, and artistic activists over the last 40-odd years. The history of the forces playing out in Iran, and the sacrifices of these courageous men and women are made eminently clear, offering us a complex understanding of today's Islamic Republic. A Riverhead hardcover. (Feb.)
Publishers Weekly
12/21/2015
This immersive intellectual history will be, for many Western readers, their first encounter with the complex currents of thought that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and continue to fuel Iran’s evolving story today. Journalist Secor delves into the ideas of the Islamic Republic’s varied rulers and intellectuals, as well as those of their pre-revolutionary antecedents. This is no lightweight summary, with topics including the contradictions of the Iranian revolutionary constitution and Austrian-British political theorist Karl Popper’s abiding influence on critics of the Islamic Republic. The theoretical material is interspersed with short biographies of dissident writers, journalists, and activists who are little known outside Iran, despite the brave stands that sent many to jail; those who survived imprisonment were exiled. Secor’s detailed but accessible explanations provide both concrete facts and a general sense that Iranian politics are far more complex than the thumbnail analyses typically provided in Western coverage. She also makes clear, with multiple accounts of violent crackdowns, that almost no one in Iran is safe from its deeply entrenched security state, with writers coming across as particularly vulnerable. Secor’s clear writing 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. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
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 hero's 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
Library Journal
03/15/2016
Journalist Secor has compiled an incredible set of stories from a variety of individuals in Iran. The men and women—including politicians, journalists, poets—about whom Secor writes have each fought for political change in a country where doing so could prove extremely dangerous. She provides a distinct look into a society that, for most readers, has been nearly closed off to the rest of the world. The stories the author shares are filled with a moving spirit of determination and hope for social change that could result in a more open and accepting society. Her knowledge, attention to detail, and thorough research are immediately apparent. Secor uses her access to Iran in a way that helps to provide a better understanding of the social context behind the current political and economic changes happening within the region. Given the very recent change in relations between Iran and the Western world, Secor's work is an essential read and 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. VERDICT This timely volume is highly recommended for readers with an interest in current events, sociology, political science, or history.—Brenna Smeall, Bellevue, NE
MARCH 2016 - AudioFile
Recently, the nation of Iran has been involved in so much human struggle that it seems nearly impossible to capture it all in one book. Iranian-American actress Mozhan Marno gives this work the feel of a documentary or a lengthy news report. Somehow, Secor manages to disclose the depth of the fight of Iran’s freethinkers and free-speakers—as well as the consequences of their plight. Marno’s voice deftly carries listeners along the sometimes torturous accounts of Iranian life over the past 37 years with a stoicism befitting a head of state. At times, there are didactic inflections that take the listener out of the story, but these are rare. Overall, this is an excellent listen for those curious about the passion of Iran’s reformers, who continue to speak their truth despite the almost certain dangers. R.A. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2015-11-01
A close look at Iranian culture and politics from the 1979 revolution to the present. Journalist Secor, whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications, visited Iran five times between 2004 and 2012, interviewing more than 150 Iranians and observing four elections. Those experiences, and many published sources, inform her revealing, often shocking debut book about the turbulent nation perceived by the West as a monolithic threat. The 1979 uprising that ousted the shah "was supposed to yield a just and self-governing" nation; instead, the country fell into "war, want, and profound isolation." Despite having an elected president and parliament, a cleric reigned as "vice-regent of God on earth" and commander of the army. All laws were subject to the approval of this Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Khomeini wielded that power with ferocity against liberals, leftists, and the United States. Nevertheless, some Iranian intellectuals questioned tradition, published widely read critiques, and looked to the West "for its most useful modern ideas while discarding its toxic core." By the fall of 1998, many of these writers "understood that they were living under siege." Within the next few years, writes Secor, "the Islamic Republic was riddled with mafia-like grids that operated in secrecy." In June 2005, the country made a surprising choice for president: the little-known mayor of Tehran, arrogant, swaggering, with a scruffy beard and "goofy grin," who campaigned as a populist: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "a common man, and a demagogue." In matters foreign and domestic, "he smashed things and watched indifferently as others picked up the pieces." Despite all this, Secor feels optimistic about Iran's future, claiming that the nation has a "seemingly endless capacity to produce internal opposition to its own authoritarianism." She characterizes its current president, Hassan Rouhani, as a moderate who wants to foster goodwill toward the West. An insightful chronicle of bloody repression and brave defiance.
