Azar Nafisi, New York Times bestselling author
of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN

“In these dark days we live in, Mahvash Sabet’s memoirs about her persecution and incarceration in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic is a ray of light. This book is important not only because it takes us into the depths of the regime’s attempts to dehumanize and humiliate its victims, but also in her refusing to be a victim—as a woman, as a believer in her religion, and as a human being."

“An essential book that reminds us of both our capacity for evil as carriers of darkness and our obligation to survive as carriers of light.”

–Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

“Sabet fought injustice and found strength in her faith and her cellmates – a testimony to how small acts of kindness in a world of evil can keep hope alive. This is an important book that illustrates the cruel persecution of the Bahá’ís in the Islamic Republic of Iran – an unflinching account that deserves to be read widely.”

–Marina Nemat, internationally bestselling author of Prisoner of Tehran

“This book is about faith and thresholds. All the prison memoirs I have read—and I have read many—are about walls and veils wrapped in ideologies. Mahvash Sabet, a prisoner of conscience in Iran, invokes doors – iron doors, doors with double chains and locks, doors with knobs on only one side – again and again in her heart-wrenching account of injustice, violence, and prejudice. Yet faith, conviction, grace, and dignity cannot be locked away. They move beyond enclosures, beyond the reach of tyranny. No door – no machinery of repression – can bar their power or their passage. Open Wide the Doors, edited and exquisitely translated by B. Nakhjavani and A. Mottahedeh, is an eloquent testimony to that truth.”

–Farzaneh Milani, author of Veils and Words:
The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers

“Amidst the tragedy engulfing the people of Iran today, Mahvash Sabet's memoirs provide a poignant glimpse of a better world. Her astonishing resilience and profound humanity in the face of prolonged injustice leave no doubt that it is, in fact, her tormentors who are in the prison of hatred and violence. Her shining example of dignified defiance shows us the path to a glorious future for Iran in which power and prosperity is derived from the noble potentialities inherent in human beings.”

–Payam Akhavan, professor of international law
and former UN prosecutor at the Hague

–Nazila Ghanea, professor of law, University of Oxford, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief