A review by cdale8
They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents by Neda Toloui-Semnani

4.0

I've been on a mid-century-history-of-Iran kick recently, and was excited to run across this title in a new book alert. It was a perfect bridge from the political to the personal, and more so because of the connections I have to the US locations that are part of the story. A 3.5, rounded up, and in all transparency I didn't finish the diary entries/letters in Part 4, which rambled on and may not have come across to the general reader as the author was intending (anyone with a modicum of empathy can imagine the heartwrench that is handed down through generations after the inhumanity meted out by both monarchal autocracy and militant theocracy, so trying to place a 12 year old's written feelings was less of a smooth read than the rest of the text), instead flipping through to the epilogues as a more fulfilling conclusion. As an unfolding of the events, however, the author did a superb job placing them and showing the human face of the tumult of that time.