The Butterfly's Cage
One Woman's Fight Against Family Tyranny and Marital Abuse

Shahnaz Khari is the youngest daughter of a wealthy family with homes in Britain and Pakistan. At 12 she had to give up school to look after her younger brothers. There followed two arranged marriages, first to a violent drug addict, then to a vicious, controlling sadist. Surviving all this, Shahnaz has written her extraordinary, compelling story.

Her family persuaded her to make a brief return to Pakistan by saying her mother was seriously ill, but when she arrived she was beaten up, threatened with shooting and drowning, stripped of all her possessions and imprisoned once again, all because she had asked for the freedom to make decisions for herself and her daughter about their lives. Eventually Shahnaz managed to return to the UK with her third husband, build a new life with him and her daughter and study for a career. She is now a social worker specialising in child care. Now Shahnaz (she has used a pen-name to avoid embarrassment for her family) has written her extraordinary, compelling story of survival.