Creative Writers Showcase: Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Remembering Akbar is on September 14, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. in the IPRH Lecture Hall, Levis Faculty Center, Fourth Floor (919 West Illinois Street, Urbana, IL).

Join in for an evening of contemplation and conversation with Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, when he reads from his moving autobiographical novel, Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution (O/R Books, 2016).  From the publisher: Set in the tumultuous aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Remembering Akbar weaves together the stories of a group of characters who share a crowded death row cell in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.  A teeming world is evoked vividly through the relationships, memories, and inner lives of these political prisoners, many of whom were eventually executed. Rather than exalting the heroic, or choosing to focus merely on despair or redemption, Remembering Akbar reveals eloquently how life unfolds when death is starkly imminent.  It is a deeply moving story of great camaraderie, biting humor, and soulful remembrance.

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is Associate Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He is the author of Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran (I.B. Tauris/Palgrave-MacMillan, 2008), and Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).  He will be reading from his autobiographical novel entitled Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution (O/R Books, 2016).  

Thanks to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for this information item.