The Cypress Tree
We Iranians are like the cypress tree. We may bend and bend on the wind but we will never break.
Kamin Mohammadi was nine years old when her family fled Iran during the 1979 Revolution. Bewildered by the seismic changes in her homeland, she turned her back on the past and spent her teenage years trying to fit in with British attitudes to family, food and freedom.
She was twenty-seven before she returned to Iran, drawn inexorably back by memories of her grandmother’s house in Abadan, with its traditional inner courtyard, its noisy gatherings and its very walls steeped in history.
The Cypress Tree is Kamin’s account of her journey home, to rediscover her Iranian self and to discover for the first time the story of her family: a sprawling clan that sprang from humble roots to bloom during the affluent, Biba-clad 1960s, only to be shaken by the horrors of the Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the heartbreak of exile, and toughened by the struggle for democracy that continues today.
This moving and passionate memoir is a love letter both to Kamin’s extraordinary family and to Iran itself, an ancient country which has survived so much modern tumult but where joy and resilience will always triumph over despair.
Published By: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publicity
“‘The heartfelt tale of a family shaped by the tumultuous drama of Twentieth-century Iran, The Cypress Tree is a profoundly affecting meditation on the shattering experience of exile.’
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Mail Today, New Delhi
Carta Capitale: O pai e a mãe terra
The National: Kamin Mohammadi: Revisiting her Iranian Childhood
The New Express India: Persepolis Revisited or view online
Mangalore Mirror: Pray in public, party in private
Jadid Online (in Farsi): A Review of The Cypress Tree
NDTV: Iran Vs The World | NDTV Interview
Platform Magazine: The Cypress Tree
Harpers Bazaar: The Memoirs, 29 Persian Tales
Hindustan Times: In Search of a Lost Homeland
Man’s World, Mumbai: Home Truths
Video & Audio
“‘The Cypress Tree is vivid testimony to Kamin Mohammadi’s ebullient, irrepressible family whose courage to endure carries them through revolution, exile and return to triumphant survival… A memoir to inspire.’
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““Kamin’s father courted her mother with a Mohammadi rose each day; a slow, elegant, romantic ritual combining his name, his land, and his love. His daughter does the same, wooing us, page by page, until we too become besotted.”
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