Cherry Mosteshar was born in Iran, but has been resident in Britain since early childhood. This book tells of her return to Tehran as a correspondent for The Independent and The Economist. However, she found that she was as much an exile in her own country as she had been in Britain. Her story reveals her as a young woman crushed by the weight of male oppression, state bureaucracy and the ever-present evil of corruption. Her book is a portrait of a society on the brink of the 21st- century, but with a culture based on the 13th-century.