It was young Iranian women who first took to the streets after the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Many defied the regime by tearing off their veils and casting them into the flames. For months, the protests that followed were carried forward by Generation Z — the daughters, sons, and grandchildren of those who, back in 1997, had voted in large numbers for Mohammad Khatami in the presidential elections.
His victory did not democratize the theocratic system, but it did open the way to a series of reforms that gave new momentum to civil society, despite the harsh backlash of the regime’s hardliners. The most recent wave of unrest stems, in part, from the awareness of rights acquired during that season of reforms.
To understand what is happening in Iran today, one must look back to those events, which the author witnessed firsthand as a correspondent for the ANSA news agency. In the updated edition of her memoir, the experiences of the protagonists of change intertwine with her own, revealing a multifaceted and often contradictory reality.
Journalist, writer, and filmmaker, Nadia Pizzuti worked for 25 years in the foreign news desk of ANSA, focusing in particular on the Arab-Muslim world. She served as correspondent in Tehran, where she lived from 1997 to 2000. She has directed three documentaries, two devoted to figures of Italian feminism and the latest to the life of a Roman female partisan.
