Writer of Courage and Prominent Baha’i Shares an Unusual Story of Compassion from Inside Iran’s Prisons
LONDON, July 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Open Wide the Doors: A Memoir of Faith, Hope and Freedom in Iran, written by Iranian poet and prisoner of conscience Mahvash Sabet and released by Oneworld Publishers, is now available for purchase in the UK. This debut memoir, translated by A. Mottahedeh and B. Nakhjavani, offers a rare and unflinching account of life behind the walls of one of Iran’s most notorious prisons. It chronicles the first ten months of solitary confinement Mahvash spent incarcerated for her faith.
In March 2008, the Intelligence Ministry of the Islamic Republic summoned Mahvash Sabet for questioning. She told her husband she’d be home by evening. But she did not return for ten years. The pretext for her arrest was a dead man, who had been buried, according to the Ministry, in the wrong cemetery. But the corpse was just an excuse. Mahvash was actually being accused of heresy and espionage and was threatened with death because of her Baha’i faith.
Open Wide the Doors is a tale of compassion, giving voice to the thieves, the prostitutes, and even the guards that Mahvash befriends inside prison. It not only shows what breaks the human spirit, but how to resist oppression and revive.
Instead of listening to those with something to gain from Iran, perhaps it is time to hear the voices of the people with nothing left to lose: women in the prisons, who encouraged each other to write, and whose words now reach us, miraculously, over the prison walls.
Mahvash Sabet was first arrested in 2008 and condemned to ten years for her faith. In 2022 she was sentenced again to another decade, and today remains at grave risk and in precarious health. Her first collection of poetry, Prison Poems, was translated and published in 2013 and won her recognition as Writer of Courage at the 2017 PEN Pinter Poetry awards. She has also published Raha (More Prison Poems) and Hekaya-e Asheghi (Love Story) in Persian. Open Wide the Doors is her first book.
For more information please visit the official book website here.
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