Ali Mirsepassi is a distinguished professor of Middle East studies at New York University and the author of a remarkable number of scholarly works on the Islamic revolution such as Iran's Quiet Revolution: The Downfall of the Pahlavi State (2019) and Iran's Troubled Modernity: Debating Ahmad Fardid's Legacy (2018), both published by Cambridge University Press. This memoir is a different type of work. It is an account of Mirsepassi's own life, starting with what he describes as his idyllic childhood with his grandmother in a farming community outside Nahavand (400 kilometers southwest of Tehran), up through to the revolution of 1978–79, when he was a leftist activist.

The book consists of three sections. Part 1 is about his early years in Nahavand and then Golpayegan (350 kilometers south of Tehran). Mirsepassi's father was a commissioner for the Department of Finance and his job required him to live in various small towns around Isfahan. As a result, young Mirsepassi came to know deeply religious cities such as Golpayegan, as well as their working-class communities, despite his own urban middle class upbringing. These experiences stayed with him and informed his views during the revolution, when he realized that for a good portion of Iranian society the revolution “was in some ways the revenge of Golpayegan and Iran's other overlooked peripheries upon Tehrani elites, upon the upper-class fantasy that Iran would soon dispense with its traditions and superstitions to join the arena of modern nations” (p. 14).

In his high school in Golpayegan, Mirsepassi became familiar with the clandestine leftist literature that was secretly passed from student to student, and sometimes from teacher to student. But there also were devout teachers who introduced him to the radio sermons of the Islamist cleric Mohammad Taqi Falsafi. For a very brief time, he was recruited to the anti-Baha'i Hojatiyyeh Society, who were devotees of Falsafi (d. 1998). Mirsepassi therefore came to know Islamism from the inside. After realizing that the Hojatiyyeh expected him to bomb the house of a Baha'i teacher in town, he ended up leaving the group in horror.

Part 2 is about Mirsepassi's years at University of Tehran (1970–74), where he became fully involved with leftist political organizations, which at the time included the fedayeen, the mujahideen, the Tudeh Party, and various Maoist factions. They analyzed and discussed the possibility of revolution in Palestine, Vietnam, Yemen, Latin America, and perhaps Iran. Mirsepassi and his classmates also became acquainted with the ideas of European intellectuals such as Sartre, Brecht, and Marcuse, although often in abstract form and without recognition that these ideas were a response to European fascism and the horrors of World War II.

Although this environment was a breath of fresh air for a student who had escaped the suffocating religiosity of Golpayegan, Mirsepassi soon realized that he and his classmates knew almost nothing about modern Iranian political history, primarily because the Pahlavi regime banned such discussions at the university. His comrades occupied themselves with half-baked understanding of European philosophers, among them Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sartre, but their debates were more like jousting matches in which every young man tried to prove his erudition, rather than a genuine understanding of what they read and how it might relate to Iran.

Another comrade, Abuzar Vardasbi, was a member of the mujahideen. He had been tortured and imprisoned by the regime but remained passionate about creating an amalgam of Marxism and Islam for Iran. The mujahideen were enamored with the messianic Shi'ism of Ali Shariati, and fervently believed that “true Islam provided a path to a utopic, classless society.” (p. 168). Hanging out with Vardasbi in the working-class neighborhoods of Tehran, Mirsepassi was stunned to realize that the dissident teachers they met were more zealous and more orthodox, especially on gender and sexuality issues, than anything he had seen in Golpayegan (p. 169).

Another issue that baffled him was the total intransigence of the left over the question of Palestine. The liberation of Palestine seemed to be as important to Iranian revolutionaries as the goal of overthrowing the Pahlavi regime. The late 1970s were a time when a possible resolution to the Israel–Palestine conflict seemed within reach. The PLO was willing to pursue a negotiated settlement to the conflict, and the Israelis were open to the two-state solution. Mirsepassi with others of his generation vehemently criticized the Pahlavi regime for not lifting “a finger in the interest of Palestinians” (p. 184). However, as he rightly points out, at times it seemed that the Iranian students were too belligerent on the issue of Palestine. Mirsepassi himself was more pragmatic. He thought the idea that Palestinians could simply obliterate Israel from the face of the earth was unrealistic. But as he points out, uttering such a sentiment among Iranian leftists was utter heresy at the time.

Adding to this ideological chaos was the fact that many of his progressive professors, men who had lived their whole lives in urban Tehran and studied abroad, heaped contempt on modern lifestyles. They were instead fascinated by a type of nativism that extolled the virtues and traditions of premodern Iranian society, ignoring how such values would impact Iran's Sunni minorities or the newly gained rights of urban women.

The last part of the memoir focuses on the year 1977–78. After completing his military service, Mirsepassi went to England, where he studied for two years. But as the revolutionary movement began to grow in Iran, he returned in fall of 1977 and fully immersed himself in it. By 1978, secular leftist students had concerns about the Khomeinists, although they hoped that during the impending revolution a majority of the public would side with the leftists. However, if one looked closely, there were ominous signs in many directions. Kurdish activists, for example, were deeply concerned. Mirsepassi traveled to the Kurdish and majority Sunni city of Sanandaj. He saw that the residents were not demonstrating on the streets, although mass demonstrations were going on in many other cities at the time. Kurds had strong ties to the leftist fedayeen and Tudeh parties, which made this lack of enthusiasm somewhat surprising. But, as one of their leaders pointed out to Mirsepassi, “It's hard not to harbor misgivings about backing a Shi'i-led movement. Khomeini's vision of the future has left many apprehensive” (p. 196).

The opposite was the case in Shi'i-majority cities such as Boroujerd and Nahavand. In October 1978 there were continuous demonstrations on the streets, and the looting of the homes of regime supporters and Bahaists had already begun. In fall 1978, Mirsepassi and his leftist friends cautiously met with the more religious factions and jointly attended an event at the busy center of Tehran-e Now (New Tehran), a working-class neighborhood. There, they found none other than the preacher Falsafi as the guest speaker of the night. In his sermon, Falsafi was crystal clear about what kind of revolution he and his followers anticipated. The shah, in his view, “intended to destroy Islam in the name of women's rights, progress, and development.” There was a conspiracy “to corrode Islam, orchestrated by Baha'is, Israel, and other British lackies.” The revolution would change everything. “A cultural and moral transformation was coming, one that would touch the innermost depths of our public and private lives.” (p. 215).

And yet none of the prominent leftist intellectuals seemed to grasp the huge chasm that separated them from Khomeini and his followers. When foreign journalists asked Homa Nateq, one of the very few well-known and progressive female historians of Iran, what the revolution might mean for women she reassured them that these were baseless concerns. Instead, she defended the religious discourses of the revolution and set the reporters’ minds at ease by stating that “in our revolution no difference exists between men and women” (p. 180). Even when Mirsepassi and his leftist friends warned Nateq that Khomeini's supporters were already harassing unveiled women demonstrators on the streets, Nateq dismissed them derisively, saying this was a revolution, the people had to be respected, and the left should not make a “mountain out of a straw” (p. 181).

The final warning sign nearly cost Mirsepassi his life. In late October 1978, he gave a speech in front of hundreds of classmates at the National University (Daneshgah-e Melli) arguing for the continuation of a university strike. His position was a direct challenge to an order by Khomeini that the strikes had to stop. The students agreed with Mirsepassi and decided to continue the strike. But once Mirsepassi left the gathering to get into his car, he was attacked by a group of Khomeini supporters. He was stabbed numerous times and left for dead in a ditch. By some miracle, a group of village boys found him. Soon after, he left the country, realizing that the Khomeinists would come after him again.

We are fortunate that Mirsepassi survived this horrendous attack and lived to tell his story and produce so many remarkable academic works. But many of his comrades were not so lucky. A decade later, in 1988, the regime summarily executed thousands of leftist political prisoners and threw their bodies into a mass grave.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in how the Iranian revolution unfolded. It finally puts to rest the idea that somehow after 1979 Khomeini and his supporters hijacked the revolution and took it in an unanticipated Islamist direction. As Mirsepassi tells the story, there were at least three revolutions taking place in 1978. There were the Islamist followers of Falsafi and Khomeini, and the religious people of cities such as Golpayegan, who wished a return to traditional Islamic values, especially related to gender. There were the secular leftist revolutionaries who hoped to create a socialist society and free Palestine once and for all. And there were the confused intellectuals who in their calls for an “authentic Iranian identity” and return to “Islamic values” became the link between the two groups, without whom the Islamic revolution would not have been possible.