Hachette Livre

Hachette Livre Reading Group Guides

Welcome to our Reading Group guide for Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat. We invite you to consider and discuss the following questions when reading this book:

  1. ‘The government had ordered women to cover their hair and had issued edicts against music, makeup, paintings of unveiled women, and Western books’. The 1979 Iranian Revolution imposed many restrictions on women. Why did women have to wear a chador and what implications does this ruling have for Marina?
  2. ‘For years, I spent my days at the cottage biking, building sandcastles, swimming’. The Caspian Sea provides an idyllic backdrop to Marina’s carefree summer holidays. Later in the book, when she revisits the place, how has she altered as a person and how have her horrific experiences shaped her hopes and dreams?
  3. ‘I loved my parents and missed them but they had always been very distant to me; we had never had a real conversation about anything.’ Why does Marina, ironically, feel more at home with Ali’s family than she does with her own? In what ways do the two family homes differ and how does religion separate the families and their values?
  4. ‘I stepped outside. It was the strangest feeling to know that I could simply walk home.’ Throughout the book there is a distinction between the inside, imprisonment in Evin, and the outside, freedom. At what point do we realise that this distinction is not as straightforward as it seems?
  5. Prisoner of Tehran is a shocking memoir which some people may find disturbing. Do you think it is important that people like Marina tell their stories however shocking they might be?

Current Reading Group Titles

  1. Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
  2. Radiance by Shaena Lambert
  3. Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
  4. The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
  5. Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
  6. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
  7. Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
  8. How To Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper
  9. Still Waters by Camilla Noli
  10. Wives of the East Wind by Liu Hong
  11. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
  12. The Keep by Jennifer Egan
  13. The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
  14. Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
  15. The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani
  16. April in Paris by Michael Wallner
  17. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
  18. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
  19. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet
  20. Red River by Lalita Tademy
  21. The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
  22. Rosetta by Barbara Ewing
  23. The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin
  24. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
  25. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

Suggested Further Reading