LoveReading Says
An incredible story.
Just imagine, for a moment, that you have travelled to another country for whatever reason and, as you are waiting at the airport ready to depart you are detained by officials and falsely accused of being a spy. Imagine that, despite your clear innocence, you are not believed and are soon imprisoned in horrific conditions and amongst dangerous criminals.
Then, imagine you are asked to complete a Satisfaction Survey as part of the protocol for your release?
This isn’t the highly publicised Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe story but the parallels are clear. The Uncaged Sky is engaging, well-written and sobering. It will leave you looking over your shoulder as you leave foreign shores, grateful this didn’t happen to you.
At times amusing, at times terrifying, this is an account of a remarkable woman's survival as the hostage of an evil regime. I recommend you read it.
Matt Johnson
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The Uncaged Sky My 804 days in an Iranian prison Synopsis
‘The sky above our heads was uncaged and unlike us, free.’
The extraordinary true story of Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s fight to survive 804 days imprisoned in Iran.
On September 12, 2018 British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested at Tehran Airport by Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Convicted of espionage in a shadowy trial presided over by Iran’s most notorious judge, Dr Moore-Gilbert was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin and Qarchak prisons for 804 days, this is the full and gripping account of her harrowing ordeal. Held in a filthy solitary confinement cell for months, and subjected to relentless interrogation, Kylie was pushed to the limits of her endurance by extreme physical and psychological deprivation.
Kylie’s only lifeline was the covert friendships she made with other prisoners inside the Revolutionary Guards’ maximum-security compound where she had been ‘disappeared’, communicating in great danger through the air vents between cells, and by hiding secret letters in hava khori, the narrow outdoor balcony where she was led, blindfolded, for a solitary hour each day.
Cut off from the outside world, Kylie realised she alone had the power to change the dynamics of her incarceration. To survive, she began to fight back, adopting a strategy of resistance with her captors. Multiple hunger strikes, letters smuggled to the media, co-ordinated protests with other prisoners and a daring escape attempt led to her transfer to the isolated desert prison, Qarchak, to live among convicted criminals.
On November 25, 2020, after more than two years of struggle, Kylie was finally released in a high stakes three-nation prisoner swap deal orchestrated by the Australian government, laying bare the complex game of global politics in which she had become a valuable pawn.
Written with extraordinary insight and vivid immediacy, The Uncaged Sky is Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s remarkable story of courage and resilience, and a powerful meditation on hope, solidarity and what it means to be free.
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Kylie Moore-Gilbert Press Reviews
'Kylie Moore-Gilbert is one pretty remarkable woman' -- Sarah Abo
'The Uncaged Sky is a brilliant and powerful book.' -- Ann Cunningham - Booktopia
'Moments in her memoir The Uncaged Sky will leave readers breathless. The sheer terror, uncertainty and gnawing dread of a brutal regime closing in all around ... Powerfully and artfully written, the book has moments of joy shining through: the loving friendships made inside prison; the exhilaration of escaping to that uncaged sky, standing on the prison roof; and the strength Moore-Gilbert found to defy her captors amid the ceaseless cruelty of her incarceration.' -- Ben Doherty - The Guardian
'a remarkable story of courage' - The Canberra Times
