Marina Nemat

Life

Nemat's grandmothers were both Russian, and she was brought up in a Russian Orthodox Christian family in Tehran. Both her grandmothers had, with their Iranian husbands whom they had married before the Russian Revolution of 1917, fled from Russia to Iran as part of the massive wave of migration that had started. Her father worked as a dance teacher, her mother as a hairdresser. She was a high school student when the secularizing monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. As a student Marina Nemat opposed the oppressive policies of the new Islamic government, attended demonstrations and wrote anti-revolutionary articles in a student newspaper.

On January 15, 1982, at age 16, Nemat was arrested and imprisoned for her views against the revolution. She was tortured in the notorious Evin Prison well known for atrocities against political inmates, and sentenced to death. She was rescued by a prison guard, who also obtained commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment. However, after five months of imprisonment, it became clear that Ali had developed an attachment to Nemat intended to force her to marry him. Nemat did eventually marry the guard and was released from prison; he was later assassinated.

Nemat later married Andre Nemat. They escaped to Canada in 1991 and have two sons. Nemat worked at the Aurora franchise of the Swiss Chalet restaurant chain, and wrote her life story in 78,000 words. She knew that many victims did not want to talk about their fate.

Today, Nemat teaches memoir writing part-time at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and regularly speaks about her experiences in front of high-school classes, universities, libraries and associations. She is a regular participant in the Oslo Freedom Forum. In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the San Francisco Freedom Forum of the Human Rights Foundation along with Aung San Suu Kyi and Garry Kasparov.

Memoirs

Her book Prisoner of Tehran has been published by 27 publishing houses around the world (2012). In April 2012, a theatre adaptation of the book was staged at the Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto under the direction of Maja Ardal.

In 2010, Nemat published another book, After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed.

Awards

Marina Nemat was awarded the first Human Dignity Prize in December 2007. This prize is to be given annually by the European Parliament and the Cultural Association Europa 2004. The Human Dignity Prize "celebrates organizations and individuals working for a world free from intolerance and social injustice, a world where fundamental human rights are respected."

The Prize Committee said that Nemat was chosen "because of her strength of character despite her life experiences."