This article tells the story of Barry Rosen, one of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days, from Nov. 4, 1979, to Jan. 20, 1981. Long before he became press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Rosen fell in love with the culture and language of Iran. He went to Iran with the Peace Corps in the 1960s, and studied Farsi at Columbia. In 1978 he embraced the opportunity to work at the U.S. Embassy during a time of great instability in Iran, never imaging that the situation would erupt into what became known as the Iran hostage crisis. Forty years after the end of the hostage crisis, the story takes us into Rosen’s experience as a captive, and the challenges he faced after his release in integrating back into his family and in society. Rosen's story is a moving, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant testament to the power of the human spirit.
From the Judges
This is a riveting story that covers a lot of ground, and the profilee Rosen is very clear in it: who he is, and how he struggled. We loved the detail of the baseball games, and the picture he paints of his sadness at having to earn his little children's trust, and his determination to do that. We were impressed by how the writer, as one of our judges said, “got such raw quotes from Rosen like: ‘Every day I wanted to die’ and ‘Am I ready for this?’” And we all thought the detail about the boat classifieds was genius.
