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An extraordinary new writer makes her literary debut with this suspenseful novel of desire, obsession, power and vulnerability, in which a crisis of inheritance leads to the downfall of a wealthy family of Persian Jews in early twentieth-century Iran.For all his wealth and success, Asher Malacouti - the head of a prosperous Jewish family living in the Iranian town of Kermanshah - cannot have the one thing he desires above all: a male son. His young wife Rakhel, trapped in an oppressive marriage at a time when a woman's worth is measured by her fertility, is made desperate by her failure to conceive, and grows jealous and vindictive.Her despair is compounded by her sister-in-law Khorsheed's pregnancy and her husband's growing desire for Kokab, his cousin's wife.