Author Roya Hakakian leads three book discussions of her own works that address issues of exile, displacement, political and religious persecution, and the struggles against authoritarianism. Each session may be taken individually. For an optimal experience, register for all three classes at once to save $15.
Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (2011)
Hakakian’s second book, hailed as both a thriller and a suspenseful courtroom drama, is the account of the 1992 murders of four Iranian-Kurdish leaders in Germany, the investigation that ensued, and the four-year trial that culminated in an historic judgment. On the evening of September 17, 1992, eight leading members of the Iranian and Kurdish opposition had gathered at a little-known restaurant in Berlin when they were ambushed and four of them shot dead. Over one hundred other Iranian exiles similarly had been assassinated or disappeared since the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. One of the survivors of the shooting along with the widow of one of the victims and a handful of reporters, attorneys, and fellow exiles, began a crusade for justice. An undeterred federal prosecutor and a patient chief judge took over the case, resulting in a verdict that marks the only time that a non-democratic regime had been put on trial for the blatant violation of international law and represents the only instance of Western success against Iran’s ruling clerics.
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