BOOK REVIEW : Woman’s Story Is a Beguiling Tale of Iran : DAUGHTER OF PERSIA: A Woman’s Journey From Her Father’s Harem Through the Islamic Revolution <i> By Sattareh Farman Farmaian with Dona Munker</i> ; Crown; $22, 448 pages

To an American reader, the seven decades of the author’s life seem like seven centuries. Born in 1921 to a patrician father and the third of his eight wives, Sattareh Farman Farmaian was the fifteenth of the 36 children in her immediate family.

Originally from Shiraz, the ancient Persian capital celebrated for its rose gardens and poets, the noble Farmaian clan was obliged to move to Tehran when the Qajar dynasty was overthrown.

There, the patriarch established his younger wives and their children “in a compound ringed about by shimmering pools and splendid green gardens, laid down like flowering carpets in the dusty lap of the Alborz Mountains.”

The author’s father was responsible for more than a thousand people; not only his wives and children but the servants, craftsmen and pensioners who served the family. The compound was an entire town, containing workshops of all sorts as well as houses, surrounded by a 10foot wall guarded by liveried watchmen.

The wives and children lived separately in interior sub-compounds, venturing into their father’s realm only when summoned. Within this strictly ordered world, all was beauty, tranquillity and respect for Shazdeh, the father, master and benefactor.

“I accepted his rule, as did everyone, with fear and reverence and distant adoration.”

Happily for the author, that rule was enlightened, benevolent and progressive. Shazdeh believed in educating his daughters as well as his sons, and Sattareh received the best schooling her country offered.

Her memories of her girlhood in this feudal paradise are astonishing, a recollection of a recent past so unique as to be scarcely imaginable to Western contemporaries.

Gracefully woven into this memoir is the turbulent history of Persia, a once glorious civilization impoverished by successive invasions, a proud people made fatalistic and distrustful by hardship, “clinging to the sustaining memory of our great past and learning, first and foremost, the ancient wisdom of the Middle East: Never trust anybody but your own family.”

Enchanted by the little she had read about America and determined to improve the lot of her country’s unfortunates, Sattareh vowed to study in this country. In order to reach the United States, she set out alone during World War II to find her way there, an unthinkable act for a young woman of her background.

Since it was still virtually impossible to travel west through Europe, she crossed Asia to India. Boarding a small, battered passenger freighter, she arrived in Los Angeles on July 4, 1944. After 31 days at sea, she was amazed and appalled to discover that she was 3,000 miles from New York.

Assisted by the teachers she had known during her school days in Tehran, she abandoned her notion of college in Ohio and matriculated at USC, the first Iranian woman ever to attend that university.

Graduating with a degree in social work, Sattareh married an Indian film student and had a daughter. After the marriage dissolved, she continued studying, teaching and working in her field, eventually returning to her homeland to train others in social work and to establish Iran’s first such school in 1958. For the next two decades, she devoted her life to developing that institution, skillfully avoiding involvement in Iran’s increasingly tormented politics. In 1979, when the Ayatollah was brought out of exile and the country roused to hysterical religious fervor, Sattareh was arrested by her own students, held for questioning and released on condition that she leave the country.

With the same meticulous attention to detail that characterizes the first beguiling segments of the book, the author chronicles the tragic recent history of Iran and the dissolution of the school she had created. Her style is modest, straightforward and matter-of-fact, unmarred by even the faintest trace of self-pity. “Long ago I set out into the world with my arms wide open, and I am sure that if I had it to do all over again, I would.”

With the help of her American collaborator, Dona Munker, Sattareh Farman Farmaian has given us a remarkable personal story as well as a succinct history of her enigmatic and exasperating homeland.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “The Storm Season” by William Hauptman (Bantam) .