The Ladies' Secret Society - by Manda Zand Ervin

Book Synopsis

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was an unmitigated disaster for the women of Iran. That fact is well known. What is less well-known and what Manda Zand Ervin brings to light in her remarkable book, is the long history of struggle against clerical domination in which the women of Iran have been engaged for centuries..

Rooted in the proud history of ancient Persia where once Mother-Gods were worshipped, the Ladies' Secret Society, founded in the early decades of the 20^th Century, was at once the inheritor of this proud history and the progenitor of the women of today who are enduring 25-year prison sentences for the defiant, yet innocent, act of removing their hijabs in public.

Ervin tells the stories and records the accomplishments of generations of individual women activists who have risked everything to educate their daughters even when held in thrall to the harem system of the Qajar era.

These women refused to be victims. They fought like lionesses for every scrap of freedom gained from the time of the Arab conquest to the era of the Shah, only to see all their hard-won rights destroyed with the coming of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution.

Yet, despite the extreme cruelty of the clergy and the imminent danger they face, the women of Iran are undeterred. Ervin pays loving tribute to them all as she relates the stories of their remarkable achievements in the face of overwhelming oppression.

Thanks to Manda Zand Ervin and her extraordinary book, we know their names and we will not forget their courageous lives.

Review Quotes

Trying to make sense of current events in Iran? Think you know the history of the people of Iran? This book -- The Ladies' Secret Society -- is the book you must read. And its author, Manda Zand Ervin, is the best guide you could find. Ms. Ervin's perspective as a pre-revolution child of Iran and a successful young professional who fled the 1979 Iranian Revolution, at her father's behest -- to save her life -- gives her credibility as the book's narrator and serves as a powerful vehicle for telling the story of the courageous women of Iran's long history and current events. You will fall in love with these brave women of Iran, and your heart will cry for a future in which their daughters can know freedom and joy.

--Asra Q. Nomani, former Wall Street Journal reporter, Georgrtown University professor, and author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

Manda Ervin's new book is a cry of the heart on behalf of Iranian women who were among the first victims of the Islamic Revolution and are now in the forefront of the struggle to take their country back and resume its historic path to freedom and democracy. Manda was a star in the first generation of Iranian woman journalists, trail-blazers who defied centuries-old socio-cultural hang-ups to push gender equality to the top of national priorities in the 1960s and 1970s. As both historic testimony and a good read, Ms. Ervin's book is certain to help with a greater understanding of what many, including some Iranians, regards as the Persian puzzle.

-- Amir Taheri, author of The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution