The key facts

  • The memoirs 'Woman Does Not Stop Fighting' were written in Evin prison and smuggled out piece by piece
  • Mohammadi's total sentence amounts to more than 44 years in prison and 154 lashes
  • In February the court handed down additional sentences and a travel ban on her; in December 2025 she was arrested again

A book written in prison and smuggled out piece by piece

The publication of the memoirs of Narges Mohammadi — the Iranian human rights activist and winner of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize — is timed to November 15, when PEN International marks the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. The book, titled 'Woman Does Not Stop Fighting. My Struggle for Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights in Iran,' has recently been published in German; the English translation is due out in September 2027.

How the autobiography was created

Mohammadi wrote the book in Evin prison. According to Mariam Claren, representative of the Narges Mohammadi Foundation in Germany, whose mother, the human rights activist Nahid Taghavi, shared a cell with Mohammadi for two and a half years, she wrote constantly. In 2020, Mohammadi was forcibly transferred to another prison, all her documents disappeared, and she had to start over. The rewritten text was smuggled out of the prison piece by piece by fellow inmates and visitors, who risked their own safety.

The path to human rights work

Mohammadi was born on April 21, 1972, in Zanjan. She became politically active in the 1990s at the physics faculty of the University of Qazvin: she organized mixed-gender groups of mountaineers — a controversial initiative at the time — and took part in founding an independent student organization, for which she faced persecution and arrests. Since 1996 she wrote about the student and women's movements, and later worked at the Defenders of Human Rights Center founded by 2003 Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, focusing on free elections, peace, and the abolition of the death penalty, including for minors. In 1998 she married the political activist Taghi Rahmani; their twins Ali and Kian were born in 2006 and live in exile in France.

Prisons, pressure, and the Nobel Prize

Mohammadi received her first major prison term connected to her human rights work in 2011. In total, she has been sentenced to more than 44 years in prison and 154 lashes. In her memoirs she describes being arrested in front of her small children, months without the right to call them, as well as torture: constant interrogations, beatings, and denial of medical care. A separate theme of her work is the psychological consequences of solitary confinement, to which her project 'White Torture' is devoted. In October 2023 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 'for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and for promoting human rights and freedom for all'; the prize was collected on her behalf by her children, since she remained in Evin prison.

What is happening now

After the Nobel Prize, according to Claren, the authorities continued to open new cases against Mohammadi, restrict her contact with the outside world, and run a smear campaign, including death threats; the foundation claims that Iran's cyber army — the second largest after the Russian one — is being used for this. At the end of 2024, after an operation, Mohammadi received temporary release on medical grounds, but in December 2025 she was detained again, harshly, at a memorial ceremony for the lawyer and human rights defender Khosrow Alikordi, who died in suspicious circumstances. In prison she was held in solitary confinement for a long time; after a public campaign she was granted so-called interruption of detention for medical reasons, but, Claren emphasizes, 'this does not mean she is free.' In February, an Iranian court handed down additional prison sentences and a travel ban on her. Mohammadi lives in constant fear of returning to prison and, despite this, continues her human rights work.