Fuelled by Iranians dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah s ailing, repressive monarchy. But in its place the revolution s leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes built a system that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah. Award-winning journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope: