The history of Iran in the twentieth century is one of turbulent political and religious transformation. Rouhi Shafii charts the impact of these changes through the lives of three generations of women in her own family. From her grandmother's life in rural Iran in the 1920s to her own final exile to London in the 1980s, she blends the personal and the political to provide a compelling social history and reveals the power of religious ideology and social control this wields over Iranian women.