Born into one of Pakistan's most influential families, Tehmina Durrani was raised in the privileged milieu of Lahore high society and educated at the same school as Benazir Bhutto. Like all women of her rank, she was expected to marry a prosperous Muslim from a respectable family, bear him many children, and lead a sheltered life of air-conditioned leisure. When she married an eminent political figure she continued to move in the best circles, and learned to keep up the public facade as a glamorous, cultivated wife, and mother of four children. In private, however, the story-book romance of the most-talked-about couple in Pakistan rapidly turned sour. Tehmina's husband became violently possessive and pathologically jealous, and succeeded in cutting his wife off from the outside world, and for 14 years she suffered alone, in silence. When she eventually decided to rebel, the price she paid was a high one: as a Muslim woman seeking divorce, she signed away all financial support, lost the custody of her four children, and found herself alienated from her friends and disowned by her parents. After the divorce, she wrote this book about her experiences. When Pakistani publishers balked at the controversial nature of her manuscript, she published it herself.