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The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club
- Author
- Sepideh Gholian
- Narrator
- Ashraf Shirazi
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 26 July 2025
- Run Time
- 3 hours 26 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake.
In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together.
Sepideh Gholian, in prison since 2018, bakes scones for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, a pumpkin pie for Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, and madeleines for Marzieh Amiri, serving time for a May Day demonstration in 2019.
The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for women, life, and freedom, by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.
Critics Review
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“Unusual, haunting.”
New Yorker
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“Gholian’s account…is a blindsiding blend of horrifying concrete detail, dizzying surrealism, and wild optimism.”
The Guardian (London)
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“A remarkable testimony to women’s bravery, compassion and solidarity in the harshest of conditions.”
Sunday Times (London)
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“The book is proof of Gholian’s triumphant resistance against a regime that wants her silenced, and a powerful message of hope for the future.”
The Observer (London)
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“Ashraf Shirazi’s narration brings quiet strength and emotional resonance to the author’s contemplations of imprisonment in Iran…Shirazi’s delivery captures each woman’s dignity, pain, and strength. The effect is a powerful picture…[with] reflective passages, storytelling, and unexpected humor.”
AudioFile
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“A fighting woman cannot be imprisoned because her voice is louder than prison walls. This book is proof.”
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner
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“So many of us admire [Gholian] for fearlessly standing up to the dictatorship in Iran…A breathtaking writerly talent. Sepideh is emblematic of a generation of Iranians who refuse to give up in their quest for justice.”
Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Sepideh Gholian
- Narrator
- Ashraf Shirazi
- Duration
- 3 hours 26 minutes
- Release Date
- 26 July 2025
- ISBN
- 9798228363229
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Memoirs, Biography: general, Gender studies: women and girls, Cookery dishes and courses: desserts, Feminism and feminist theory
Synopsis
How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake.In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together.Sepideh Gholian, in prison since 2018, bakes scones for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, a pumpkin pie for Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, and madeleines for Marzieh Amiri, serving time for a May Day demonstration in 2019.The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for women, life, and freedom, by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.
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