An impassioned, searing memoir of one man's brutal imprisonment by the Iranian government that "turns a lens not only on Iran's surreal justice system but on the history and culture that helped produce it" (The Washington Post), with a foreword by Jon Meacham

"Clear and compelling . . . A gripping tribute to human dedication and a cogent indictment of a corrupt regime."--Washington Independent Review of Books

The basis for the major motion picture directed by Jon Stewart

Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential election, assuring his pregnant fiancée that he'd be back in just a few days, a week at most. But instead, he would spend the next three months in Iran's most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogations at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.

For the Bahari family, wars, coups, and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar's father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. During the worst of his encounters with Rosewater, Maziar drew strength from the memories of his loved ones--and prayed that he would be released in time for the birth of his first child.

Riveting and heart-wrenching, Rosewater offers insight into the cruelty of the Iranian regime, as well as the future of a country where the democratic impulses of the youth clash with the totalitarian government. It is the story of a family's courage in the face of repression, and of one man's journey to freedom.

"I really connected to Maziar's story. It's a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free."--Jon Stewart

Previously published as Then They Came for Me