My guest today is Roya Hakakian. It’s a great pleasure to welcome Roya back onto this podcast. She is a Jewish Iranian poet, journalist, and writer and is the author of three books. Assassins of the Turquoise Palace details the murders of four Iranian Kurdish leaders in Berlin in 1992 and the historic aftermath of those events; she has also authored a book-length love letter to her adoptive country, A Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious. Her first book, an exquisitely written memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran was the subject of my last conversation with her, here on the Quillette podcast. Roya is also a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She has written extensively on the Iranian theocracy, including for Quillette. I felt that she was the ideal person to talk to about the current wave of protests in Iran, the possible fall of the Ayatollahs, and the prospects for freedom for the people of that country.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Roya Hakakian.   

Podcast #299: A Jewish Girl in Revolutionary Iran

Managing Editor Iona Italia talks to Roya Hakakian about her extraordinary memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.

QuilletteRoya Hakakian

Roya Hakakian - Quillette

Roya Hakakian is an Iranian American Jewish journalist, lecturer, and writer. She is the author, most recently, of ‘The Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious.’

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