This record of a childhood spent in the ritual-filled, privileged days of Persia before Khomeini, evokes a civilization shaken to dust by the 1979 revolution. It is an account of the domestic life of a society which was slowly moving from traditional to western ways. Shusha Guppy was born and brought up in Persia and later educated in Paris. She is the London editor of the Paris Review and is also well known as a singer and songwriter and has made numerous recordings of her own and other songwriters' works.