This extensive memoir, spanning approximately 1,600 pages, is published in several formats, including a complete edition, a two-volume edition, and an eight-part series. Across these eight parts, readers accompany the author through successive stages of his life, encountering the events, struggles, achievements, disappointments, and defining moments that shaped his personal and intellectual journey.

The autobiography consists of:

• Part One: The Unceasing Struggle
• Part Two: Revolution, War and Displacement
• Part Three: Sailing Through the Storms of Adolescence
• Part Four: This Is Europe
• Part Five: Return
• Part Six: This Is the Prison of the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Part Seven: From the Injustice of Judge Salavati to the Travesty of Bidarzarni
• Part Eight: A Difficult Farewell

Attention to detail, critical reflection, balanced judgement, and an anthropological approach to events, individuals, and social movements form the framework to which the author has sought to remain committed throughout the narration of his memories. In this sense, the work belongs not only to the tradition of autobiography, but also to that of critical memoir and reflective life writing.

The intertwining of personal experience with major political and social developments gives the memoir a significance that extends beyond the story of a single individual. The coincidence of the author’s childhood with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, and their consequences in Naqadeh—one of the most turbulent and politically sensitive regions of Iranian Kurdistan—constitutes one of the central themes of the narrative. Recounted from a distinctive and often overlooked perspective, these chapters revisit the history of the period, the activities and relationships of Kurdish political parties, the devastating civil conflict in Naqadeh, and its enduring impact on the wider Mukriyan region throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Another distinctive feature of the memoir is its portrayal of the gradual transformation of Kurdish society in particular and Iranian society more broadly as both navigated changing social, economic, and cultural realities. The book reflects critically on traditions, customs, and social norms and examines the role they play in shaping character, identity, and life trajectories. In many respects, these experiences will resonate with countless women and men who have lived through similar transitions.

Travel, migration, exploration, and life in different societies form another major thread of the narrative. The hardships and opportunities accompanying these experiences provide readers not only with compelling stories but also with valuable lessons and reflections. At times, the memoir itself seems to encourage readers to embrace the spirit of travel and the challenge of discovering new worlds despite the uncertainties and risks such journeys may entail.

Although Kameel Ahmady is primarily known for his academic training and research as a social anthropologist and has never pursued a formal political career, his close familiarity with Kurdish political movements across the four parts of Kurdistan, together with his experiences of living and working throughout these regions, lends particular depth to his observations, critiques, proposals, and analyses of Kurdish affairs. Some of the accounts presented in these chapters may themselves serve as valuable historical sources.

A further turning point in the author’s life came with his return to Iran and his extensive fieldwork among minority communities and socially vulnerable groups. Many of these projects were rooted in personal and family experiences, including experiences related to sexual abuse and the social realities of the environments in which he lived.

His research in Iran focused on issues relating to children, gender, identity, and ethnicity, producing studies on female genital mutilation, child marriage, temporary marriage (sigheh), white marriage, LGBT communities, child labour, male circumcision, child sexual abuse, violence against men, and child waste-picking. Many of these studies were regarded as pioneering and innovative, while others were viewed by state authorities as challenges to established norms and boundaries.

Ultimately, these initiatives resulted in severe security and judicial repercussions, including arrest by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, solitary confinement in Evin Prison, and a ten-year prison sentence issued by Judge Abolqasem Salavati. Faced with the prospect of a decade in prison or leaving his homeland, the author confronted one of the most difficult decisions of his life.

During the same period, he also found himself at the centre of allegations associated with the Iranian MeToo movement. In this autobiography, he addresses aspects of those events and their surrounding controversies for the first time, presenting his account alongside the documentation and sources upon which he relies in responding to those allegations.

The events that form the closing chapters of the memoir eventually compelled Kameel Ahmady to leave once again the homeland and life he had built in Iran and Kurdistan. On a cold winter night, he crossed the Qandil Mountains towards the Kurdistan Region with the intention of returning to Britain. The anxiety, uncertainty, and fear of that journey remain palpable throughout these pages.

Standing now at the threshold of a new chapter in his life, Kameel Ahmady shares the story of what he has witnessed, endured, lost, and learned.

Life is Resistance is the story of one individual’s struggle for survival, belonging, dignity, and freedom—told through the eyes of a social anthropologist and shaped by some of the defining events of contemporary Kurdish and Iranian history.

Farsi, Kurdish, and English editions are currently available to readers and audiences worldwide.