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Cover of Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody

Not Without My Daughter

  • 423 pages · about 7 hours
  • First published 1987
  • 27 editions

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1 About this book

Imagine yourself alone and vulnerable, trapped by a husband you thought you trusted, and held prisoner in his native Iran; a land where women have no rights and Americans are despised. For one American woman, Betty Mahmoody, this nightmare became reality, and escape became only an impossible dream.

Not Without My Daughter is the true story of one woman's desperate struggle to survive and to escape with her daughter from an alien and frightening culture. Betty had married the Americanized Dr. Sayed Bozorg Mahmoody in 1977.

His interest in his homeland had been revived since Khomeini's takeover, and he had increasingly expressed his desire to introduce his five-year-old daughter Mahtob and his American wife to his beloved family in Tehran. Betty and her daughter anxiously awaited the end of their vacation in this hostile land, but the end never came--Moody had other plans for his family. Betty and Mahtob became virtual hostages of Betty's tyrannical husband and his often vicious family.

  • Political prisoners
  • Biography
  • Women, united states
  • Marriage
  • Wife abuse
  • Manners and customs
  • Social conditions
  • Mothers

2 About Betty Mahmoody

Born 1945

Betty Mahmoody (née Lover; born June 9, 1945) is an American author and public speaker. In 1984, during a visit to Iran with her husband and daughter, he refused to let them return to the United States, holding them captive in Iran and subjecting them to constant abuse until she escaped with her daughter to Turkey in 1986.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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