MAHVASH SABET IS best known in Ireland for sharing the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize for Poetry with the late Belfast poet, Michael Longley.

That year, while still in prison in Iran, she was named the PEN International Writer of Courage having authored a highly regarded volume of prison poems.

“I am humbled to share the PEN Pinter Prize with Mahvash Sabet,” Longley commented on the occasion of the award, “an Iranian poet condemned in 2010 to 20 years in prison simply because of her Bahá’í faith and her work on behalf of the Bahá’í community.” She was, he continued, “a songbird trapped in a cage”.

Twice sentenced to 10 years in prison because of her faith, Mahvash Sabet’s memoir of her early days of incarceration in Iran’s notorious prison system — compiled from little scraps of paper smuggled out from her cell — has now been published.

Open Wide the Doors shows through her personal experience of torture and imprisonment the human cost to those who have fallen foul of Iran’s revolution. A member of the Yaran, an informal group that helped support Iran’s Baháʼí community, Sabet........

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