The Crowned Cannibals

Contents

Introduction by E. L. Doctorow / ix

Terror in Iran / 3
Masculine History / 19
My Images of the Shah / 85
The Strangulation of Iranian Writers / 110
Prison Memoirs / 131
Memoirs of Other Prisoners of the Pahlavi Period / 209

Masks and Paragraphs (Poems in English) / 219

Summoned to give evidence regarding what was a sort of crime, he has exercised the restraint that behooves a conscientious witness. All the same, following the dictates of his heart, he has deliberately taken the victims' side and tried to share with his fellow citizens the only certitudes they had in common—love, exile, and suffering. Thus he can truly say there was not one of their anxieties in which he did not share, no predicament of theirs that was not his…

Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done to them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

None the less, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilence, strive their utmost to be healers.

—Albert Camus
The Plague (tr. Stuart Gilbert)