The Uncaged Sky

My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison

By: Kylie Moore-Gilbert

Narrated by: Kylie Moore-Gilbert

On 12th September 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 25th November 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.

©2022 Kylie Moore-Gilbert (P)2022 W F Howes

Thank you Kylie, Great book!

Thank you, Kylie,
I also watch Kylie’s interviews and other online events that she is present.
I can’t m find words to apologize for what Islamic Republic has done to her. I’m sure there are many, many of Iranian have the same feelings and we are very sad and sorry in this regard.
The Uncaged Sky is a great source for freedom, freedom for any nations under the dictatorship!
🙏❤️🙏❤️

One of the best prison stories I’ve read/listened

Ms. Moore-Gilbert is an excellent story teller and most importantly a rebel! As an ex-prisoner myself I laughed out loud when she’s constantly putting up resistance which without doubt took the Iranians by surprise. The experience, of course, must’ve felt unbearable at times but the story shows that she adapted very quickly to the situation. I also liked that she chose to read it herself!

Amazing, powerful, brave

I started reading this book because I wondered how the human mind could deal with this type of situation. I expected the sadness and pain but didn’t expect the generosity and love and support from other prisoners. Just an amazing story. So strong, so brave, What happened to you doesn’t define you Kylie. You giving a voice to all those women who don’t have a voice, that’s what defines you!

Uncaged sky

I enjoyed this book. Admire her strength and her fair mind even at the most difficult times in her life. I cried at cruelty she endured. Thank you for sharing your story in such a profound manner
FM

I hope everyone read this

I was so deeply impacted by this book as an Iranian national who understands sentence by sentence the experience that Dr. Moore-Gilbert went through. I strongly recommend this book and I would love to see Kylie going on more interviews and podcasts to share more about her 804 days in captivity.

Sharing The Uncaged Sky with Kylie

Likely enough words are not allowed for all I’d like to say about Dr. Kylie Moore - Gilberts story. First I purchased the book but when not ample time to read, I also purchased the audible so I could work, drive or perform my daily tasks while attentively hanging on to every word of her story. I’d get so angry at what her captors would do to her, and as I hung onto every word she’d read, hatred would grow inside of me for what she went through. She’s an amazing woman, her strength is unimaginable and Id love to have the pleasure of meeting her. Her husband is a piece of crap, and did her a favor. How any man could not stand by a wife throughout that ordeal shows what a weak man he is. Id love to somehow connect with her and be a trusted friend and to forever hear her talk, learn from her knowing what an amazing friend id have.

A Gripping Story of Innocent, Despair and Eventual Triumph

This was a very interesting listen. It is a story of a western academic who travels to Iran to attend a rare international conference and ends up a captive of the brutal Iranian dictatorship masquerading as an Islamic republic. Australian academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert narrates her more than two year ordeal in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps - part government within a government, part enforcers and elite thugs. The events she describes are not new but offer an interesting look, from the perspective of a non-Iranian, into Iran’s brutal regime and it’s equally heartless control over its people. I happened to have done a deep dive into recent Iranian history. Under the former regime of the late Shah, overthrown in 1979, the Savak - the Shah’s feared secret police, methods not unlike those described by Dr. Moore-Gilbert were widely used against the Iranian people. Despite the savagery of the Savak, at least the general atmosphere wasn’t as repressive as those Kylie described. I’m happy that she was able to return to Australia at the end of her ordeal. But for tens of thousands of ordinary Iranians, the suffering continues. As Kylie Moore-Gilbert enjoins us in the epilogue to her book, let’s keep these and ordinary Iranians in our thoughts and prayers.

Entertaining, but

I found bewildering: continual defiance of captors, self-proclaimed scholar ignorance of objective form of pronouns.

Waw loved it!

So detailed and emotional I was tearing up at some points. I can’t believe the level of details she still remembered and her fighter attitude!

Heartbreaking

Completely in love with this book and couldn’t stop listening. Hope Kylie is doing well