BREAKING! JUNE 11: SEPIDEH RELEASED FROM PRISON!
Celebrating a Memoir/Cookbook by Sepideh Gholian: Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes
The UK Guardian reviewer said of the book that: “In every line and in every moment it attempts to recreate, it is entirely and unconditionally defiant.”1
“A fighting woman cannot be imprisoned because her voice is louder than prison walls. This book is proof”—This quotation from Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner,2 accompanied the announcement of the publication of The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes, by Sepideh Gholian. Thirty-year-old Sepideh is a political prisoner held behind Evin’s walls, but her profound empathy with fellow prisoners, her fury at oppression, her joy in comradeship, and her hope for the future, ring loud and clear around the world with this new book released in April, 2025 by OneWorld Publications. It calls for readers to try out the 16 recipes that accompany stories of 16 political prisoners, some including harrowing accounts of prison abuse and torture. She has been repeatedly imprisoned by Iran’s theocratic regime since 2018 when she was 23 years old (see her heroic background story in the on this website under #FreeSepideh).
Here’s just one tidbit to whet your appetite — recipe for madeleines with which she highlights the story of Marzieh Amiri, a journalist sentenced to over 10 years in Evin and 148 lashes for “collusion against national security” (i.e., covering labor strikes in front of parliament):
Bake it the night before, stick it in your pocket, stride down the pavement, let your hijab [headscarf] hang lopsided so you’ll feel some wind in your hair, and take a bite out of the madeleine with the rap playing for you. Carry out a tiny act of feminism in the name of Marzieh Amiri… One day, when our people are victorious, I’ll bake you a cake in the streets of Ahvaz [her hometown in oppressed Khuzestan province]. That day isn’t far off now. I hope we can bring it about together.
The story of how sections of the book were smuggled out of prison in pieces and images is also fascinating.3 It was a determined collaborative feat sent out of Evin prison in scraps of paper or via phone calls, patched together, translated and then published.
We encourage readers to purchase the book here at Revolution Books. For online or temporary reading, we share with you a PDF version or EPUB version produced by OceanofPdf.com.