Kamin Mohammadi was nine years old when her family fled Iran during the 1979 Revolution. Bewildered by the seismic changes in her homel&, she turned her back on the past & spent her teenage years trying to fit in with British attitudes to family, food & 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 & its very walls steeped in history. The Cypress Tree is Kamin`s account of her journey home, to rediscover her Iranian self & 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 Iran-Iraq War & the heartbreak of exile, & toughened by the struggle for democracy that continues today. This moving & passionate memoir is a love letter both to Kamin`s extraordinary family & to Iran itself, an ancient country which has survived so much modern tumult but where joy & resilience will always triumph over despair.