With its rich cultural history and its recent decades of political turbulence, Iran can be confounding when peered into from the outside. Iranian scholars often compare its social fabric to a Persian rug — intricately knotted and amazingly complex. Helpfully, Shirin Ebadi, the courageous Iranian human-rights lawyer and first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, has come forth with The Golden Cage, which simplifies that complexity. Dr. Ebadi guides the reader through Iran's modern political history, explaining the historical foundations of three major political camps and the struggles that have made political Iranians who they are today. She used a personal touch, leading the reader deep into the lives of three brothers of her childhood friend Parí. By interweaving the stories of the brothers with major political events of the last century, she uncovers three radically different political facets of modern Iran. She explains how and why the shah had such a strong following, how Iranian communists developed a base as quickly as they lost it, and the means through which Khomeini and the mullahs rose to power.

Viewing Iran through the U.S. media, most see an oversimplified society torn between the religious conservatives and those seeking a more modern society — the government versus the Green Movement. But Iran has a richer and more complex story behind its contemporary struggle. Although the three brothers in Ebadi's story do not represent any component of the recent Green Movement, Ebadi fills in the gaps. Additionally, by chronicling the hardship she and her friend faced, she connects the past to the present, revealing the mindset of those disaffected by the Islamic Republic.

Ebadi begins with the eldest brother, Abbas, whose aristocratic tendencies and romantic sense of country characterized the last shah's supporters, monarchists who, like Abbas, vehemently opposed the socialist — even communist — tendencies and connections of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Abbas took part in the military raid on Mossadegh's palace, illustrating what Kenneth Pollack meant in The Persian Puzzle: "There was a great deal of kindling laid at Mosaddegh's feet; all the CIA had to do was strike the match." Many Iranians supported and loved Mohammad Reza Shah for the sense of greatness he brought to Iran, or at least their circle of government and military associates did. Abbas embodies this love of country when, living as an exile in the United States, he asks Ebadi to bring him something from Iran: soil to place on his wife's grave.

Mossadegh's rise to popularity in the early 1950s indicated a clear division within Iranian society, and the brothers in Ebadi's story exemplify that schism. In direct contrast to his elder brother, Javad came to admire the rebellious tendencies of the Communist party, which blamed Western capitalism and imperialism for Iran's problems and its bourgeois tendencies. Javad's role in the Islamic revolution, like that of many Iranian communists, was not trivial. However, once Khomeini assumed power, it was only a matter of time until the alliance of convenience among religious conservatives, nationalists (still carrying posters of Mossadegh) and communists came apart. Khomeini's secret police first went after the most formidable enemy, the Mujahadin-e Khalq, a small militant Islamic-Marxist organization. Such groups stood no chance, living in the shadows of a police state. After years of fear, Javad, like many others, was captured and imprisoned at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison.

Ali, the youngest brother, was a taciturn baby who had become, as Ebadi explains, a "surly boy" who "found laughter unseemly." He fit in well with the asceticism of conservative Islam. He would spend entire afternoons praying at the mosque. Ali found mullahs who welcomed him warmly. On a trip with his family to the city of Mashhad, famous for its monument to the martyrdom of the eighth imam, he refused to accompany his elder sister Parí to the tomb of the great Persian poet Ferdousi. Ali claimed that he loved Ferdousi, but "I love Imam Reza more."

Ali's viewpoint in many ways represents the coming post-revolutionary storm, in which the conservative clerics loved Islam so much that they ignored Persian traditions central to Iranian identity. By 1978, with the revolution in full swing, Ebadi came across Ali at a protest demonstration. When she attempted to greet him warmly and inquire about his family, he refused to acknowledge her because she was not wearing a veil. Ali's dedication to the cause served him well initially, as he gained great prestige in the new Islamic Republic. He was well connected with a mullah who knew Khomeini personally.

Thus, the three brothers fell into different ideological camps, refusing to compromise their ideals. As Ebadi notes, Parí's "brothers lived in a cage that even history could not unlock. Especially history." The three had made initial choices that led them on separate paths from which there could seemingly be no return. Although both Abbas and Ali had their moments of political fortune and power, neither Parí nor their mother could convince them to help family members — including their brother Javad — who the regime imprisoned. The brothers would not show their faces at home at the same time. The family was torn apart.

Ebadi's concern reaches beyond her friend's family to the entire society. The lesson she imparts is not that the Islamic Republic is entirely to blame, but rather the purist ideologies that lead to such oppressive regimes. Khomeini's Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran), a military branch founded to prevent internal dissent and promote the revolution, borrowed brutal tactics from the shah's secret police, including the torture of political prisoners. However, they took these measures to an extreme because of their convictions.

The Pasdaran's actions affected not just the regime's opposition but the whole populace. They tapped phone lines and read citizens' mail. Privacy was no longer an option. Some of their many prisoners, like Parí's uncle, were mistakenly arrested despite having little, if any, connection to the regime's political enemies. Ebadi and many other women lost their jobs and were forced to wear the traditional veil. The regime removed Ebadi from her judgeship and then replaced her and others, like the procurator general, with old friends of Khomeini who had never studied law or earned a diploma. The Pasdaran all but forced Parí out of the country after repeatedly wrecking her medical office. Most riveting of all is Ebadi's three-and-a-half page account of solitary confinement. Her description brings to life an ordeal that has been a reality for too many Iranians.

Ebadi connects her friend's story to the present injustice within Iran, using Parí's broken family to exemplify a major component of the Green Movement. The Golden Cage appears to be Ebadi's cry for help. She shows signs of exasperation with her characters, who unwillingly left Iran either to flee the secret police or to escape a life of never-ending tragedy. Through these personal accounts, Ebadi sends forth a call to all Iranians who love their country and do not necessarily hate the Islamic Republic, but wish to see an end to repression.