The Evin Prison Bakers Club, Sepideh Gholian
The Evin Prison Bakers Club, Sepideh Gholian
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The Evin Prison Bakers' Club
Surviving Iran's Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes

Author: Sepideh Gholian, Hessam Ashrafi

Narrator: Ashraf Shirazi

Unabridged: 3 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/26/2025

Synopsis

How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake.In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together.Sepideh Gholian, in prison since 2018, bakes scones for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, a pumpkin pie for Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, and madeleines for Marzieh Amiri, serving time for a May Day demonstration in 2019.The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for women, life, and freedom, by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.

About Sepideh Gholian

Sepideh Gholian is an Iranian journalist and activist, currently in Evin Prison. She was arrested in November 2018 during a strike by the workers of the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Complex and was severely tortured in detention. In 2023, a video went viral of her removing her hijab and calling for the downfall of Khamenei.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Zinnia on July 21, 2025

Cannot overstate the importance of this book.......more

Goodreads review by Maggie on July 30, 2025

Had I not read a half dozen books set in/around Afghanistan & India prisons I don't think I would have been able to get through this book of essays. But because I have I could picture these women, living out sentences that are not earned, in conditions inhumane, but still with a drive to find joy in......more

Goodreads review by Jayasoorya on July 21, 2025

The Evin Prison Baker’s Club by Sepideh Gholian is a powerful memoir of a political prisoner that reminds us hope and joy can exist even in the darkest of places, sometimes through something as simple and comforting as baking. Sepideh shares her harrowing experience inside brutal and notorious prison......more

Goodreads review by Mousumi on July 21, 2025

I have an immensely huge sweet tooth. Rasgullas, tres leches, jalebi with rabri, strawberry tarts, anything sugary sends me calling heaven. And yet, this book brought me face to face with the actual sweetness of life: freedom. Sepideh Gholian, the author, is currently imprisoned in Evin Prison, Tehra......more

Goodreads review by Kartik on May 25, 2025

A remarkable book that should be mandatorily read by everyone. Enduring inhuman violence, torture and humiliation in the prisons of Iran, women who have been imprisoned on mostly unfounded grounds/without evidence come together and find community and empathy—both forbidden sins in these prisons—in f......more

Quotes

“Unusual, haunting.” New Yorker

“Gholian’s account…is a blindsiding blend of horrifying concrete detail, dizzying surrealism, and wild optimism.” The Guardian (London)

“A remarkable testimony to women’s bravery, compassion and solidarity in the harshest of conditions.” Sunday Times (London)

“The book is proof of Gholian’s triumphant resistance against a regime that wants her silenced, and a powerful message of hope for the future.” The Observer (London)

“Ashraf Shirazi’s narration brings quiet strength and emotional resonance to the author’s contemplations of imprisonment in Iran…Shirazi’s delivery captures each woman’s dignity, pain, and strength. The effect is a powerful picture…[with] reflective passages, storytelling, and unexpected humor.” AudioFile

“A fighting woman cannot be imprisoned because her voice is louder than prison walls. This book is proof.” Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner

“So many of us admire [Gholian] for fearlessly standing up to the dictatorship in Iran…A breathtaking writerly talent. Sepideh is emblematic of a generation of Iranians who refuse to give up in their quest for justice.” Arash Azizi, author of What Iranians Want

Awards

  • London Sunday Times Pick
  • Guardian Pick
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