#Diverseathon2021: November’s Host and Prompt

This post is a couple of days early, but it’s time to talk about November’s host and prompt for Diversathon: The host is ME!!!  It’s finally my turn! At the beginning of the year when Diverseathon was announced November seemed so far away, and now it is almost here…

For November the prompt is: A book set in Iran.
November’s host: Me: I will host here and also on my Facebook page and Instagram.

**I will be having a giveaway: A $20 e-gift card to the bookstore of your choice. All you have to do is read a book set in Iran and share what you thought about it on social media. **Be sure to tag me in some way so I see it!**  Previous Diverseathon hosts are welcome to join in on this giveaway.  This giveaway will last for the entire month of November with the winner being announced on my Instagram.

What am I reading for November for #Diverseathon2021? It will be two very different type of books:

-The Stoning of Soraya M: A True Story by Freidoune Sahebjam
-Lost Boys by Darcey Rosenblatt

Book Description:

Soraya M.’s husband, Ghorban-Ali, couldn’t afford to marry another woman. Rather than returning Soraya’s dowry, as custom required before taking a second wife, he plotted with four friends and a counterfeit mullah to dispose of her. Together, they accused Soraya of adultery. Her only crime was cooking for a friend’s widowed husband. Exhausted by a lifetime of abuse and hardship, Soraya said nothing, and the makeshift tribunal took her silence as a confession of guilt. They sentenced her to death by stoning: a punishment prohibited by Islam but widely practiced. Day by day sometimes minute by minute Sahebjam deftly recounts these horrendous events, tracing Soraya’s life with searing immediacy, from her arranged marriage and the births of her nine children to her husband’s increasing cruelty and her horrifying execution, where, by tradition, her father, husband, and sons hurled the first stones.

This is one woman’s story, but it stands for the stories of thousands of women who suffered and continue to suffer the same fate. It is a story that must be told.

**This is one I read years ago.  The book itself is banned in Iran and there is also a film based off this true story.**

Book Description:

It’s 1982, and twelve-year-old Reza has no interest in joining Iran’s war effort. But in the wake of a tragedy and at his mother’s urging, he decides to enlist, assured by the authorities that he will achieve paradise should he die in service to his country.

War does not bring the glory the boys of Iran have been promised, and Reza soon finds himself held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Iraq, where the guards not only threaten violence—they act upon it.

Will Reza make it out alive? And if he does, will he even have a home to return to?

 

What are YOU reading for #Diverseathon2021 in November?