Death to the Dictator! A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 election and Pays a Devastating Price

This moving, brutal account of Iranian protests against the 2009 re-election of President Ahmadinejad centers on protestor Mohsen Abbaspour, a recent college graduate with largely literary interests who had not even bothered to vote in the previous election. This book describes how Mohsen evolved from little more than a sympathetic, fearful onlooker (days before the election, he and his mom attended a rally for candidate Mousavi) to a determined participant in the increasingly dangerous protests that followed the announcement of the election results on June 13 (Ahmedinejad reportedly won 62 percent). Mohsen would ultimately be arrested in an inauguration-day demonstration (August 5) and spend 24 days in jail; the first and final chapters are devoted to the horrifying treatment he endured while imprisoned, including torture and rape. A clear and important record of the human toll imposed by one dirty election and a close look at a national injustice that captivated the world, Moqadam (a pseudonym) can be jarring when attempting to score broader geopolitical points (castigating the Chinese and Russian governments, for instance, for executing Muslims while they simultaneously maintain "strategic alliance[s] with the Islamic Republic"). (May)