Being a Chinese who lived in China for over 50 years, especially the 10 disastrous years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as a university teacher, I can well understand the oppression and frustration Azar Nafri experienced under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors. “Teaching in the Islamic Republic, like any other vocation, was subservient to politics and subject to arbitrary rules,” she writes at the beginning of her book. That was exactly what happened in China in those years. Everything was politicized, so to speak.

 Terror reigned, especially during the first years following the overthrow of Shah, King of Iran. Those were years when everything was either black or white, either revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, either loyalty or betrayal. There was no space for grey or non-revolutionary, for compromise or reconciliation. People were executed summarily or sentenced to years of imprisonment for the smallest offense against the regime. Western culture was rejected as decadent and poisonous. “Death to America!” and other such slogans reverberated in the air.