The Colonel — Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

On a pitch black, rainy night in a small Iranian town, the colonel paces back and forth inside his house waiting for the inevitable â€" the knock on the door from the secret police. From there he will be taken to the tortured body of his youngest daughter.

The Islamic Revolution, like so many revolutions before it, is devouring its own children. The colonel must bury his daughter before sunrise, alone, without ceremony. So who is to blame? What follows is a shocking diatribe against the failures of the Iranian Left over the last sixty years.

Confrontational, angry, sad and lyrical, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi leaves no taboo unbroken as he asks three generations who have suffered under oppressive and brutal regimes, how has it come to this.