Presents a retelling of the classic story, "Beauty and the Beast", set in Persia, where Orasmyn, heir to the throne, is turned into a beast after making a foolish choice, and must find a woman to love him to undo the curse.
Follows the efforts of Zahra and her oldest son, an Internet blogger, to locate another son, Mehdi, after the young man vanishes during the protests in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009.
Her father's involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces thirteen-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future.
Presents a look at Iranian politics and culture, examining social mores and Farsi phrases that reveal the sensibility of Persians, including a desire for privacy, praise, and poetry, and provides an assessment of the idiosyncrasies of President Ahmadinejad and other characteristics of Iran and its people.
The author describes the torture and pain she suffered as a political prisoner in Iran's notorious Evin prison during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic revolution, her sentence of death for not releasing the names of her friends, and her forced relationship with one of her interrogators who eventually saves her life.
Zarah Ghahramani recollects her childhood in Iran, being raised by a family who encouraged her creativity in a country were women were oppressed; and recalls her experiences in Evin Prison, a jail in Tehran where she was subjected to physical and psychological torture for showing her hair in public.
