Contemporary Authors

• Iran Lonely Planet (Footscray, Victoria, Australia), 2004
• The Cyprus Tree: A Love Letter to Iran ( memoir) Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2011
• Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 2018

1. Bella figura : how to live, love, and eat the Italian way LCCN 2017055692 Type of material Book Personal name Mohammadi, Kamin, author. Main title Bella figura : how to live, love, and eat the Italian way / Kamin Mohammadi. Published/Produced New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Projected pub date 1805 Description pages cm ISBN 9780385354011 (hardback) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. The Cypress tree : a love letter to Iran LCCN 2011488845 Type of material Book Personal name Mohammadi, Kamin. Main title The Cypress tree : a love letter to Iran / Kamin Mohammadi. Published/Created London ; New York : Bloomsbury, 2011. Description 272 p. : map ; 23 cm. ISBN 0747591520 9780747591528 CALL NUMBER DS259.2 .M64 2011 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 3. Iran LCCN 2007325838 Type of material Book Personal name Burke, Andrew (Travel writer) Main title Iran / Andrew Burke, Mark Elliott, Kamin Mohammadi. Edition 4th ed. Published/Created Footscray, Vic. : Lonely Planet, c2004. Description 408 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps ; 20 cm. ISBN 1740594258 CALL NUMBER DS254 .B875 2004 Alc Copy 1 Request in Reference - Main Reading Room (Jefferson, LJ100)

• Amazon -

  KAMIN MOHAMMADI was born in Iran in 1969 and exiled to the UK in 1979. She is an experienced journalist, travel writer, and broadcaster who has written for the British and international press including The Times (London), Financial Times, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, and The Guardian.

• Wikipedia -

  Kamin Mohammadi
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  Kamin Mohammadi is an exiled Iranian writer living in Britain. She is also a broadcaster and journalist who specializes in Iran related topics.[1]
  Biography[edit]
  Kamin Mohammadi was born in circa 1970. She lived in Ahvaz, Iran. She moved with family to London, United Kingdom after the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979. Her family adapted British traditions including celebrating Christmas and watching the Queen's speech to the nation. Her family tried to integrate into British life through adapting British culture and limited their contacts with other Iranians in Britain and Parsi institutions.[2] She rediscovered her Iranian identity at a later stage in her life, something she avoided during her youth.[3] She wrote about her experiences in The Cyprus Tree: A Love Letter to Iran. She wrote about living in Iran and than fleeing to London, placing the stories against the background of historical events.[4][5] Bustle placed her book first on a list of books that showed the "real" Iran behind the headlines.[6] She spoke about Iraqi gas attacks on Iran and the sufferings in caused at the e joint Action Iran and CASMII meeting in London on September 19, 2006.[7]

• The Florentine - http://www.theflorentine.net/lifestyle/2012/10/kamin-mohammadi/

  Kamin Mohammadi
  Iran, Italy, England: Bridging cultures through writing
  Rose Mackworth-Young
  October 11, 2012

  Kamin Mohammadi's family was forced to flee their home country of Iran during the 1979 revolution, when she was just nine years old. Now living between London and Tuscany, she has recently published her first book, The Cypress Tree, a ‘love letter to Iran' that <> and reconciles <> sides through a literary journey that bridges the two.

  It may seem strange that Italy proved the best place to write a book about Iran, but Mohammadi first came to Florence to find a retreat in which to work on The Cypress Tree. ‘I was struggling to write the book in London. A friend offered me her flat in Florence for a few weeks, so I packed up my life and came. I had never visited Florence before. I was enchanted by the city. I loved the simplicity and enthusiasm: going to the market every day and buying the most delicious produce for only a ‘tenner'; having coffee at Caffé Cibrèo and Isidoro, the manager, calling out ‘Brava' every time I lifted my pen. And being here gave me all of this lovely space to write, not knowing anyone and not speaking a word of Italian. In those five weeks, I wrote the same amount that I'd written in a year in London.'

  As it has done to so many expats who planned to stay here only a short period of time, Italy worked its magic on her and she never left. Having lived most of her life in London, she finds Florence just perfect, a small city with none of the stresses of the metropolis: ‘Oh, how sweet,' she says about Florentines, ‘They're complaining about traffic! There are only three cars!' A few months after deciding to stay, she met her partner, Bernardo Conti, the official photographer of Stefano Ricci, the Florentine luxury menswear designer, and now lives with him, his three children and dozens of dogs in the countryside near Rufina.

  This year, she started to collaborate with Florence's annual Middle East Now Film Festival, which takes place in April, helping to introduce Iranian filmmakers and artists to the organisers. ‘It's a fantastic festival-very contemporary, with everything from little animations to features that make you laugh and documentaries that just rip the heart out of you.'

  The Cypress Tree was published in the United Kingdom in 2011 (it will be published in Italian by Piemme in 2013). Through her family's stories, Mohammadi seeks to educate people about Iran and Iranians. ‘All I'm trying to do is humanise. I think we all know, really, that we're all the same underneath. We all want to love our kids, fall in love, dance from joy, have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies.'

  ‘Everybody has the same question on finding out I'm from Iran. It doesn't matter where in the world they are from. They all ask, "If I went to Iran, as a woman, would I have to wear a headscarf?"'
  ‘What this little piece of fabric symbolises for people is oppression of women, but while we have an authoritarian and patriarchal regime, Iranian women are probably better off than most of their sisters in the Middle East. We got the vote in 1963, but in Saudi Arabia they can't even drive, let alone vote. Sixty-five percent of university graduates are women as are 80 percent of civil servants and teachers. Women have long come out of the home in Iran. My cousins are doing things in the Islamic Republic of Iran that my mother, wearing miniskirts and going around in her beehive during the Shah's heyday, couldn't dream of. There's been a lot of evolution and this little piece of fabric blinds us to that.'

  ‘It's not our fault over here; we just don't know. Iran keeps it pretty tight. I've worked with brilliant journalists at the BBC who've said things like "Oh, but of course women can't own property in Iran." It's the "Oh, but of course" that kills me. Why "but of course?" Because you think Iran is Saudi Arabia, or the Iranian regime is the Taliban? It's a massive misconception.'

  Mohammadi has not been back to Iran for six years, but she has found surprising similarities between her native country and her adopted one. ‘Italy is Iran, basically. Italy has the mafia, we have the mullahs. There's the crazy, chaotic Iranian in me that totally loves this country because it's like that, too. Even our ta'arof-an elaborate and complicated system of courtesy-has a version here. Italians call it la bella figura. And the warmth and humanity of the Italians is very Iranian, too. Those things I find very familiar.'

  Mohammadi has a second book in the works, another one about Iran but very different from her last. ‘I'm going to write a novel about life right now in Iran, today, in the twenty-first century. I want it to be about a boy and a girl and a love affair because there's nothing better than sex to illustrate modernity!'

  FLORENCE QUICKFIRE

  When you have guests, where do you like to take them?
  A night-time tour of Florence by car.

  Favourite thing about Florence?
  San Miniato. It's not only beautiful but it also opens my heart.

  Favourite place to get a cappuccino?
  Undisputedly Florence's best coffee is at Caffé Cibrèo in Sant'Ambrogio.

  One thing the United Kingdom will always do better?
  Civility; street fashion; eccentricity; individuality; multiculturalism.

  One thing Iran will always do better?
  Passion; poetry; good manners!

  One thing Florentines will always do better?
  Style; beauty; enthusiasm; flirtation!

  One thing you'll never get used to about Italy?
  Inefficiency and monoculturalism!

  How have you changed by being in Florence?
  Although I don't see it myself, according to my friends I've become more stylish. Sometimes my bag and shoes even match! I've also become a lot more relaxed, although I'm not sure my partner, Bernardo, would agree!

• From Publisher -

  In 2008, Kamin Mohammadi found herself worn down – by the increasingly unrealistic expectations of her high-flying job in the magazine industry, by her fluctuating weight and health issues, and by her non-existent love life.

  Made redundant from her job, she fled the bleak streets of London for a friend's sun-dappled apartment in Florence. There, among the cobbled streets, the bustling, vibrant markets and the majestic palazzos, Kamin found a new lease of life. Leaving behind her ascetic diets and compulsive exercising, she began to imitate the ways of the carefree Italian women she saw around her – the morning café rituals, the long lunches – taking pleasure in the finer things. Within weeks she had regained her health, her natural figure and her zest for life – and even a lover or two.

  At once lyrical and practical, Bella Figura shows us how to make every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be. From how to choose the perfectly ripe tomato to how to walk down the street in style, Kamin Mohammadi explores the intricate nuances of Italian culture, and sets down a simple guide to a better, more elegant – and ultimately more satisfying – life.

• The National - https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/cypress-tree-author-kamin-mohammadi-revisits-her-iranian-childhood-1.434182

  Cypress Tree author Kamin Mohammadi revisits her Iranian childhood
  A lost lamb becomes a metaphor for upheaval and flight as Kamin Mohammadi talks about her memoir and her search for her Iranian roots.

  David Mattin
  July 11, 2011
  Updated: July 11, 2011 04:00 AM
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  Kamin Mohammadi grew up in the UK after her parents fled Iran when they realised they might be arrested by the revolutionary authorities. After years of denial, she has now examined those events in a memoir.
  When Kamin Mohammadi's family fled their home in Ahvaz during the 1979 Iranian revolution, foremost in the nine-year-old girl's mind was the fate of her pet lamb, Baboo. Having indicated they were only going to Tehran - the family put it about that they were leaving only for a short holiday, to avoid unwanted attention - Kamin begged her mother to let her return to their home one last time, to say goodbye. But the danger was too great, and she was refused.
  A few days later, Kamin learnt that Baboo had been eaten for lunch by relatives. A day or two after that, the Mohammadi family were on a flight bound for London: Kamin would not set foot in Iran again for 17 years.
  "These are the sorts of things that are important when you're a child," says Mohammadi, smiling. "I didn't really understand the revolution, and everything that was going on. But I was heartbroken about poor Baboo.
  "Really, it's only when I started to write this book that I began fully to get to grips with what had happened to us. That was what was hardest about writing this book: reliving the trauma. There was a deep wound there that had not been addressed."
  The book in question is The Cypress Tree, Mohammadi's acutely observed, sad, funny memoir of an Iranian childhood interrupted by the events of 1979. Here, then, are blissful, innocent days spent at the family's home in Ahvaz, where her father was a director of the National Iranian Oil Company, followed by sudden displacement to England, and years in London during which Kamin pushed away her Iranian background before a return to Tehran in 1996 saw her admit, finally, that hers was a story worth telling, and treasuring.
  It seems fitting, somehow, that we meet only minutes away from the Conde Nast headquarters where Mohammadi has forged a career as a magazine editor. The location seems perched between two eras of her life: the London years, and then the reclamation of Iran.
  It was in 1996, when she went back to Tehran, that the author knew she must tell her family's story.
  "I wanted to tell people about my family, who were such amazing characters," she said. "At first I tried it as fiction, but I saw it wasn't going to work that way: it had to be a memoir. Most of all, the desire to write the book was just a version of my desire to communicate about all this stuff that I'd pushed away for so long: leaving Iran, everything."
  If Mohammadi distanced herself from her Iranian background for years, it was an understandable reaction to the culture shock she must have felt upon touchdown at Heathrow airport in 1979. Before the revolution, hers had been an affluent, middle-class Iranian childhood spent between Tehran and Ahvaz, where the family lived in a compound for oil company employees: there were poppies growing on the lawn, and a date palm in the sprawling garden. But then, via the inexplicable logic that governed the revolution, Bagher Mohammadi's position with the company made him a target for arrest, so all of that was hastily exchanged for a flat in the central London district of Kensington and, for Kamin, a boarding school in the Suffolk countryside to the north-east of the capital.
  Mohammadi is touching and hilarious on her struggle to understand her new environment: what was a flannel for? Why did English people wash by sitting in a tub full of stagnant water? Where was the warmth, the human kindness, that she was used to in Iran?
  "Yes, it was very traumatic. I reacted by turning away from Iran: all I wanted to do was erase that past. I didn't want to be Kamin Mohammadi, and be brown. I just wanted to be like everyone else.
  "We refused to go to Farsi school, or to be friends with other Iranian kids, which in retrospect would have been helpful. But it was a self-protective thing, and it was hard for our parents," Mohammadi pauses, and considers: "But my reclaiming Iran hasn't been easy for them either, because now being involved with Iran means being involved with the Islamic Republic, and they're really not up for that."
  As a fellow diaspora Iranian, I understand some of the idiosyncrasies of Iranian family life, the fierce insistence on privacy, and the focus on aberu, or reputation.
  "My family have been wonderfully supportive of me as a writer, but the whole aberu thing was an issue," she says. "It wasn't really them, it was me: it runs deeper in me than I realised. Of course, I didn't want to invade the privacy of others. But so often the best stories are invasive.
  "I was so scared of showing a draft of the book to my father, and kept putting it off. When I did, he wrote me notes, just factual stuff, this happened then, and so on. The chapters dealing with the revolution were left blank. I said, 'did you fall asleep?', and he said, 'no, you got it right'. And that was it. I thought that very graceful of him. My father is 85 years old now, and an old-fashioned guy, and it must have been very strange to see his life story being told by his daughter. But whatever his private feelings about that, he didn't make them my problem. I thought that was quite beautiful."
  It was by examining the relationship between the 1979 revolution and the Mohammadi family that the author came to consider broader questions about the Iranian past and future.
  "It strikes me now that I grew up in Iran knowing so little of life outside my own family," she says. "Before writing The Cypress Tree I went back to the history books: I wanted to clarify my thoughts on the history of our country, the character of our people, and the nature of the revolution. I mean, there were members of our extended family who were revolutionaries; they were left wing, they were ideological, they were about freedom and justice. They thought things couldn't get any worse than they were under the shah: how did it all go so wrong?"
  The answer, says Mohammadi, lies partly in a lack of social cohesion.
  "I've come to the conclusion that we Iranians just don't know one another well enough," she said. "When the revolution started in 1979, it was the first time my family had ever seen those sorts of people, the basijis.
  "Today, it's still the same problem. I go back to Tehran and everyone asks: 'Who is voting for Ahmadinejad? Someone must be.' There's such a divide, and I don't think we'll ever make a new society unless we address that."
  Despite the repression in the wake of 2009's Green Movement, Mohammadi remains optimistic.
  "You know, we are a very old culture. We have assimilated every invader," she says. "Iran won't lose. We - I mean you and I - may never get to live in Tehran, but Iran will be all right in the end. That's part of what writing this book has taught me: to take the long view."
  The sentiment conjures up a line from the book, when Kamin's great-grandfather tells her mother: "We Iranians are like the cypress tree. We may bend and bend on the wind but we will never break."

• Greene and Heaton - http://greeneheaton.co.uk/clients/kamin-mohammadi/

  Kamin Mohammadi
  Agent: Judith Murray

  Kamin Mohammadi is an Iranian-born freelance journalist, editor, broadcaster and public speaker who has written for, among others, the Financial Times (UK and China), The Times, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, The Virginia Quarterly Review (US), Time (US), Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Sunday Times of India, Condé Nast Traveller (UK and Italy), Psychologies, Donna Moderna (Italy), Men’s Health, Vogue Korea, as well as co-authoring The Lonely Planet Guide to Iran and numerous other travel guide books. Her journalism has been nominated for an Amnesty Human Rights in Journalism award in the UK, and for a National Magazine Award for Best Essay by the American Society of Magazine Editors in the US. She appears regularly on BBC Radio Four commentating on Iranian issues, on which she also gives talks and lectures in the UK, Italy and US.
  An avid commentator, she has appeared on BBC Radio Four’s WOMAN’S HOUR, MIDWEEK, FOUR THOUGHT and THE WORLD TONIGHT, BBC World Service’s OUTLOOK and THE WORLD TODAY WEEKEND, Channel Four Radio’s THE MORNING REPORT, Monocle Radio’s MONOCLE 24 and India’s NDTV. She has appeared in the BBC (television) documentary Iranian Enough? and helped to write and co-present the BBC World Service’s three-part radio documentary Children of The Revolution. She was a major contributor to the BBC Radio Four series Escape from Tehran. She has been a regular presenter of BBC Radio Four’s FOUR THOUGHT since 2013.
  Her first book, THE CYPRESS TREE, was published in 2011. She is currently working on her next book, entitled LA BELLA FIGURA, about her experiences living la dolce vita in Florence, and finding both new ways to live and exploring new ways to love (with delicious waist-trimming, health-giving Italian recipes!). It is due to be published by Bloomsbury in the UK, Knopf in the US and Random House Canada in spring 2018.

• Frontline Club - https://www.frontlineclub.com/humanising_iran_insights_with_karim_mohammadi/

  Humanising Iran: Insights with Kamin Mohammadi
  Frontline Staff
  August 18, 2011

  By Helena Williams
  Iranian author and journalist Kamin Mohammadi explained her reasons for telling her family’s story without saturating her book The Cypress Tree in her homeland’s complex political history at the Frontline Club last night.
  “The greater truth I want to communicate about my country is a human truth – it’s not about politics,” said Mohammadi, adding: “the more I understood about my family, the more I understood how we embodied the story of Iran.
  Mohammadi, who was talking to BBC Persian TV’s Pooneh Ghoddoosi last night, came to London with her family in 1979, when she was just nine. It was 17 years before she was to return to rediscover her Iranian identity.
  "I didn’t go back [to Iran] for ages and just fell in love with my family when I did. I thought they were great characters, and I thought a book was a great way to share them with the world.
  "My book is about telling the story of my family and therefore my country. The best way I can think of to counter demonization is to humanise Iran."
  The book focusses on memories and family portraits in order to give a sense of the country she loves. Despite her efforts as a child to turn her back on her Iranian heritage, she still struggled to fit in with British attitudes and habits. Never quite able to let Iran go, she returned when she was twenty-seven.
  “For me it’s simply the country of my birth. Mine is a country so contradictory that even its children are divided as to what they call themselves,” she explains, referring to the use of "Persian" and "Iranian" by different groups.
  Now a writer, broadcaster and journalist specialising in Iran, she divides her time between London and Florence and is grateful for the freedom she was able to embrace growing up in London.
  “One of the things that struck [in Iran] is not just the women but the young people. They are so full of what they need to express and don’t have a voice. I have the absolute and utter good fortune of growing up [in England]. I was able to believe that I am equal, and have freedom of expression. It is an honour to be in this country where I can speak.
  “To give a voice, and bear witness to them, is a compelling motive behind my whole career.”
  The title of her book is an old family saying, which portrays the Iranian character – tenacious in the face of adversity.
  “Such is the symbol of our land. It is in our art, on the walls of Persepolis, and indigenous to the region my family is from.”
  “We Iranians are like the Cypress tree. We may bend, and bend, and bend in the wind, but we do not break. This is the true Iranian character.”

• Kamin Mohammadi Website - https://www.kamin.co.uk/

  Kamin Mohammadi is an author, journalist, broadcaster, editor and public speaker. Born in Iran, she and her family moved to the UK during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. She has written for the British and international press including The Times, the Financial Times, Harpers Bazaar, Marie Claire, Condé Nast Traveller (UK and Italy), Psychologies, Donna Moderna (Italy), Men’s Health, The Sunday Times (UK), The Sunday Times of India, The Mail on Sunday, Virginia Quarterly Review and the Guardian as well as co-authoring The Lonely Planet Guide to Iran and numerous other travel guide books. Her journalism has been nominated for an Amnesty Human Rights in Journalism award in the UK, and for a National Magazine Award by the American Society of Magazine Editors in the US.
  Kamin has also authored two books, THE CYPRESS TREE: A LOVE LETTER TO IRAN (Bloomsbury, 2011), published in Italy as MILLE FARFALLE NEL SOLE (Piemme Voci, Sept 2013), and BELLA FIGURA: HOW TO LIVE, LOVE AND EAT THE ITALIAN WAY (published in UK by Bloomsbury, US by Knopf and Appetite Random House in Canada in 2018). Her essay BIOLOGICAL CLOCK appeared in an Italian anthology of 17 women writers working in Italy all writing on the same subject, called PENSIERO MADRE (Neo Edizioni, 2016)
  An avid commentator, she has appeared on BBC Radio Four’s WOMAN'S HOUR, MIDWEEK, FOUR THOUGHT and THE WORLD TONIGHT, BBC World Service’s OUTLOOK and THE WORLD TODAY WEEKEND, Channel Four Radio’s THE MORNING REPORT, Monocle Radio’s MONOCLE 24 and India’s NDTV. She has appeared in the BBC TV documentary Iranian Enough? and written and co-presented the BBC World Service’s three-part radio documentary Children of The Revolution. She was a major contributor to the BBC Radio Four series Escape from Tehran. She is now a regular presenter of BBC R4’s FOUR THOUGHT.

  Kamin farms an ancient Tuscan olive grove from which she produces small quantities of very special first cold press extra virgin olive oil. From this she makes a series of natural balms for the skin; click on link Kamin's Magic Balm for more information. Kamin's activities as a yoga teacher, Reiki healer and massage therapist hosting retreats in Tuscany can be seen on the yoga link above.

  I have now been living in Florence and Tuscany for ten years. In that time I have grown passionate about the craftsmanship that Tuscans excels in, from creating leather goods, to how they make olive oil. To preserve the authenticity and even existence of these skills feels ever-more urgent in this globalised world of mass production where the connection between producer and consumer is stretched to breaking point. In Florence there are many master craftsmen still at work, and a younger generation keen on bringing these skills into the modern world. In the Tuscan countryside, there are oil and wine producers who are passionate about respecting traditions and young people returning to work the land. I wish to connect those of us who live an urban life with this slower, more delightful way to create – be it a handbag or a litre of olive oil. To that end, I will be leading a tour around Florence and Tuscany later this year with Steppes travel, bringing a small group of travellers to the workshops of Florence and the vineyards of Tuscany, visiting small workshops and innovative wine cellars. For more details or to book visit: Steppes
  Bella Figura experience
  For those who wish to relive a little of the extraordinary adventures recounted in Bella Figura, and to experience the method of living with joy and beauty, the Italian way, I have devised two group workshops/tours to bring the book alive for readers in Florence. The half-day workshop includes a tour of Bella Figura haunts and characters in Florence, visits to artisan workshops, and lunch in one of the eateries immortalised in the book. The full-day workshop includes a trip to our house The Frantoio on our 10th-century castle estate in the countryside of Chianti [from skechwriter; looks like it may now be up for sale for 6 million pounds] where there will be a simple Tuscan cooking class, and olive oil tasting.

Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way

Margaret Quamme
Booklist. 114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way.
By Kamin Mohammadi.
May 2018. 320p. Knopf, $26.95 (9780385354011). 641.01.
Mohammadi's sparkling, month-by-month account of a year in Italy is a less exotic (and perhaps less self-absorbed), more outwardly observant version of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2006), but without the praying. In January 2008, stressed and depressed, Iranian-born Mohammadi took a buyout from her job as an editor of a glossy British magazine and accepted a friend's offer to stay at her vacant apartment in Florence. There she worked on a memoir (The Cypress Tree, 2011), made friends with a bartender, observed the people and places of the city, and fell in love first with a charming scoundrel and then with a nice-if-complicated guy with two ex-wives, three kids, and a passel of dogs. Touting the virtues of olive oil and daily strolls and offering a set of uncomplicated recipes and lifestyle suggestions, <> if not completely original <>--Margaret Quamme
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Quamme, Margaret. "Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 11. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537267996/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=40e22536. Accessed 8 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A537267996

Mohammadi, Kamin: BELLA FIGURA

Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Mohammadi, Kamin BELLA FIGURA Knopf (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 5, 8 ISBN: 978-0-385-35401-1
An Iranian-born British journalist goes to Italy on an extended work sabbatical and unexpectedly finds the fulfillment that had been absent from her life.
When Mohammadi (The Cypress Tree, 2011) lost what she thought was her dream job as an editor for a prestigious magazine in London, she was overweight, overworked, and miserably unhappy. So she took her severance pay and went to live in Florence, where she gave herself one year to try to make it as a writer. Florentines immediately welcomed her with open arms and taught her the concept of "la bella figura," or "making every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be." Taking this cultural lesson to heart, the author embraced the slower pace of life. She shopped at open-air markets for fresh foods and learned how to appreciate the benefits of olive oil, which she took like "medicine four times a day...sometimes drinking [it] straight from a tablespoon." Within a short time, the weight she had been unable to lose in London fell away. Feeling more confident in her newly glowing skin and body, Mohammadi began to wear more stylish clothes that celebrated the femininity she had hidden away in shame "under shapeless black clothes." When an Italian playboy named Dino came into her life, she exuberantly indulged in a sensuality and sexuality she had all but abandoned. The broken heart she suffered afterward became part of an "education" that led her to greater self-appreciation. Her new openness eventually led her to a man whose life as a twice-divorced father of three children she accepted and loved despite its messy complications. Interspersed throughout with delicious recipes and bella figura-inspired lifestyle tips, the book is<< a down-to-earth modern-day fairy tale for the world-weary>> that celebrates personal transformation and all things delectably Italian.
A charming, delightful memoir of self-transformation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Mohammadi, Kamin: BELLA FIGURA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959935/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e9cfb874. Accessed 8 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959935

Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way

Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p77+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way

Kamin Mohammadi. Knopf, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-385-35401-1
In this charming hybrid of self-help and memoir, journalist Mohammadi (The Cypress Tree) relates a journey that began 10 years ago when she left her frazzled and unfulfilling life in London for a year's sabbatical in Florence, where she planned to write a book. She quickly became enamored of the Italian way of life, which is about "making every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be" and embracing "generosity and abundance." Mohammadi conveys life lessons learned in Italy (from the health benefits of olive oil to the importance of slowing down and observing one's surroundings), alongside her progression toward self-acceptance. The book is also part travelogue--Mohammadi includes vivid descriptions of the area's landmarks and attractions, like the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pubblico in nearby Siena--and part romance, as Mohammadi finds herself entwined with a few of Florence's most eligible bachelors. Clueless about the culinary arts upon arrival, Mohammadi is treated to a pasta-making lesson by a charismatic plumber, and includes some favorite Italian recipes at the end of each chapter.<< Mohammadi captures myriad aspects of the charming Italian lifestyle, and her story's happy ending is a testament to its benefits>>. (May)
Caption: Kamin Mohammadi describes how she changed her outlook on life by moving from London to Florence in Bella Figura (reviewed on p. 77).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 77+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637470/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7095bb21. Accessed 8 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637470

Quamme, Margaret. "Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 11. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537267996/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=40e22536. Accessed 8 June 2018. "Mohammadi, Kamin: BELLA FIGURA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959935/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e9cfb874. Accessed 8 June 2018. "Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 77+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637470/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7095bb21. Accessed 8 June 2018.

• DNA
  http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/review-book-review-the-cypress-tree-a-love-letter-to-iran-1646041
  Word count: 657

  Book review: 'The Cypress Tree: A Love Letter To Iran'

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  Written By

  Mita Ghose

  Updated: Feb 5, 2012, 11:00 AM IST
  Book: The Cypress Tree: A Love Letter To IranKamin MohammadiBloomsbury272 pagesRs499
  The language of loss and longing, distressingly familiar today, often risks drowning out individual voices. For the author of The Cypress Tree, the challenge to make her own heard must have been particularly daunting, with the benchmark already set by fellow Iranian Azar Nafisi for tales of survival and exile emerging out of Iran in the wake of its Islamic Revolution. That Kamin Mohammadi’s memoir defies comparison with Nafisi’s own critically acclaimed story, Reading Lolita In Tehran, is due, partly, to their divergent perspectives. But it is Mohammadi’s area of focus — the large extended family she inherited from her Kurdish-Iranian parents — that lends her book its unique dimension. For her, “Iran will always be about the people whom I love.”
  Torn from them in 1979, as the Revolution swept Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power and forced her family into exile in Britain, nine-year-old Kamin understood little of her plight, sensing only the “rich smell of fear” that hung over the country she wouldn’t see again for 18 years.
  By the time she did, she had learnt what exile was all about and the meaning of alienation in a Western milieu that regarded the Islamic Republic of Iran with hostility and tarred all Iranians with the same brush. It would, moreover, take her years to recognise that “underneath the Western laminate” she had acquired to gain acceptance from her English peers, she was Iranian “through and through”, a fact that has kept drawing her back to her native shores ever since.
  If the journalist in Kamin feels impelled to lend gravitas to her narrative through an attempted analysis of Iran’s evolving status since its glory days under Cyrus the Great, touching upon landmark historical and socio-political developments under subsequent regimes, as co-author of the Lonely Planet guide to Iran, she can’t resist taking us on a cultural voyage of discovery, capturing for us the rich flavours and fragrances of her land. For avid Iran watchers, however, of greater interest is the parallel society Kamin discovers on subsequent visits to Iran, operating in contravention of the strictures imposed by the autocratic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-led government. Clever hackers and cellphone users conspire to facilitate the forbidden — banned websites, clandestine film screenings or “hook-ups between the sexes”.
  Iranian women are willing collaborators in such subversion, slyly tweaking the austere mandatory dress code in their favour. “The colour,” evidently, “is back in Iran.”
  <> is, nonetheless, Kamin’s family, a motley bunch so entertaining and endearing that to quibble over her romanticised portraits of them would seem churlish. It is in the segments dedicated to them that<< she flings off European decorum and surrenders to Iranian sentimentality, seasoning it with candour, wit and a piquant charm.>> Here, among these irrepressible people who lend her prose its lyricism and spice, is the author’s “lost paradise”. Its undisputed diva is Maman-joon, her maternal grandmother. Adamant, in her final months, that her passing be mourned in the best traditions of Shia Islam, she warns her progeny, “When I die, I want rivers of tears… and don’t think I won’t be watching…” She certainly deserves her star status in a family album replete with joyous, vibrant images, faintly tinged with melancholy.
  It is on the strength of those unforgettable images that Mohammadi is likely to be forgiven some self-indulgence, including her occasional need to adopt a feminist stance or assert with disarming optimism that resilient Iran will survive anything, including a threatened nuclear strike by US-backed Israel. The Cypress Tree is, after all, her impassioned “love letter to Iran”. And much, surely, is permissible in matters of love.

• The Country Wives
  https://www.countrywives.co.uk/cypress-tree-kamin-mohammadi/
  Word count: 594

  The Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi
  0
  By Annabel on May 25, 2018 ·
  Don't miss this!, Entertainment
  I recently read and reviewed Kamin’s latest book, Bella Figura, which is the story of her recent lifestyle change and move to Florence. By the end of this most captivating book I had to read the book, The Cypress Tree, that Kamin Mohammadi wrote when she moved to Florence.

  The Cypress Tree is Kamin’s story of her home, Iran, where she was born and lived with her parents and sister until she was 9 years old. In this book she travels back to Iran to rediscover her Iranian self and to seek out and recount the story of her family. Her family was large and <>
  My knowledge of Iran’s history is very limited and I was keen to learn and understand more, particularly at this moment in time when Iran’s influence on world peace is so relevant.
  The Cypress Tree is <>, Iran, <>. Kamin’s description of her home country through the lives of her mother, Sedi, her grandmother, Fatemeh Bibi, and her Kurdish father, Bagher, are captivating and enlightening and they instantly transport you, the reader, to this beguiling country.
  The way Kamin writes is truly exceptional as she brings such detail to life which makes you feel you are there, sat at Sedi’s dining table, smelling and tasting the delicious array of food – “the choice and variety of dishes on her table, the steaming khoreshts, mountains of saffron-stained rice, the ‘belly-full’ stuffed fishes, yoghurts sprinkled with crushed dried rose petals and mint with a myriad of pickles and salads.”
  However this warm world that Kamin spent her first nine years was shaken by the horrors of the Iran-Irag War and her immediate family then had to learn to live with the heartbreak of exile and to be separated from the rest of their relations. This life change toughened them and in the case of Kamin’s father, broke him, whilst the struggle for democracy continues today in their beloved Iran.
  Kamin describes her grandmother, Fatemeh Bibi, “(she) was then a small white-skinned creature with a barrel-like figure and legs that were beginning to bow out at the knees. Maman-joon may have been small but there was a charisma and joie de vivre to her that belied her size.” We instantly know her and can feel the love between her and her granddaughter, the author, as it spills off the pages of this book. Maman-joon’s final passing is one of the most moving and yet peaceful passings of a person that lived a life well, was loved and loved back and
  To read this book is to understand the love that Kamin has for her country of birth, Iran, to feel the terror of those that still live their under its religious, secular dictatorship. However it is also to understand some of its behaviours and religious customs<< in their correct context>> and not as negatively as is so often depicted in our western world.
  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.

• Three Chinguz – Reviews & Rantings
  https://threechinguz.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/book-review-the-cypress-tree-by-kamin-mohammadi/
  Word count: 665

  Book Review: The Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi
  Published on 24/04/2014
  By The Gorgeous Palah Chingu

  My Rating: 4/5

  ‘We Iranians are like the cypress tree. We may bend and bend on the wind but we will never break’
  I bought this book last year and I only got a chance to read it this year. Why I took so long to read, I don’t even know. Maybe it does not have an appealing cover like some middle-eastern non-fiction books like a piercing stare by a young girl who wore a burqa or a war image captured by some famous journalist. Iran, in my opinion, is a truly country that makes you wonder and ponder. This country is formed from an empire of great Persia to the reign of Shah, then it has been handed to Khomeini and it changed into the Islamic Republic of Iran until now. This book featured an interesting perspective from a refugee who just returned to her own country where she used to call it home once.
  I read some of the books about Iran like Persepolis, not without my daughter and so many more. However, this one struck in my mind a bit longer. Kamin told a tale about her big family but in the same time, she poured her heart out to her beloved country. She returned to Iran after a long time and sudden regret bloomed from her heart for not preserving her own culture and tradition in her foreign country. The language for this book is quite simple actually. When the language is not so difficult to understand, you connected with the author much quicker than you thought.
  From the event of how her grandfather and her grandmother get married, how her mother standing up to her conservative father to avoid from being married off and even got a chance to further in higher education and work in a management level in some company until to the event of Shah Downfall in Iran and How Khomeini stated ‘He felt nothing’ when people asked how he felt right after he returned to Iran. I could connect with Kamin because she wrote the Iran history in a view of a person who yearn a freedom and peace for her country. She looked back into her childhood and teenage hood where she learned many things from her uncles, aunties, cousins and even her grandmother. She pointed out how the Iranian revolution somehow turned many things upside down including breaking many relations through betrayals and how many deaths she encountered during the event.
  Kamin also vividly narrated the experience of leaving Iran and seeking a refuge in England somehow changed and altered her behavior but failed to change her parents. Her parents still continuing living in England like how they live in Iran but with a different community. Since they are no longer with a big family, gatherings will be attended by an Iranian community who’s faced the similar fate of fled from the country. Kamin confessed how her teen- rebellious phase forcing her to abandon Farsi, her language that she spoke everyday at Iran into a thick accent of English in England. Little did she know it will show how she made a bad choice when she barely able speaks that language when she returned to Iran.
  I have no criticism on the book as I always enjoyed reading non-fiction books. I love reading about people lives, tragedy, experience, difficulty or any events that changed the idea of living their life. I find it very gutsy and me myself hoping I could able to do that someday. I wish Kamin did put an assemblage of her family photos in the book so that readers could see it. If you wanted to know about Iran’s history but does not want to read a thick book with a very small letter, this book might do you good.

• Alphabet Games
  https://alphabetgames.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/cypresstreereview/
  Word count: 597

  The Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi: Book Review
  23
  Aug
  2011
  6 Comments
  by alphabetgames in Book Reviews Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Culture, Cypress Tree, Iran, Kamin Mohammadi, Reviews

  2 Votes

  ‘We Iranians are like the cypress tree. We may bend and bend on the wind but we will never break’
  What it says on the back:
  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 seeped 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, Bibi-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.
  ——
  <>, she brings the history of Iran to life in a way that at least I have not seen, read or heard before and provides a first-hand insight to the experiences of the revolution and Iran’s development to a near Middle Eastern superpower. Even to those like myself who are widely read on Iran, Kamin brings something new to the fore. She writes from a personal perspective, of what she felt, heard and experienced around her, with the Iranian culture illuminating from every page. You find an understanding of Iran and Iranians through each sector of society from upper to lower classes, which for a half Iranian herself was enlightening. The exiled second generation Iranians all know what happened in 1979 but rarely do we get an articulate first hand insight as this.
  Mohammadi writes with charming Farsi interspersed in her story, and you soon hear yourself reading like an Iranian. There is definitely something about Iran that gets under your skin and does not leave you. In the words of Mohammadi:
  ‘Our culture and our history continue to enrich the souls of new Iranians born to families far from home, and from Los Angeles to Perth, a new generation of Iranians are growing up with a longing they can hardly understand, a heart beating with the yearning to visit the land of our ancestors, to lie under a tree in the soft sunlight and become intoxicated by the fragrance of jasmine and orange blossom – to repossess our own personal paradise’.
  I could not help but feel a little envy as I read her story and how so immersed in Iranian culture Kamin was while growing up and continues to be. The Cypress Tree is a book that<< provides an opening to Iran that people in the West have never encountered until now>>. It’s a book for politicians, for teachers; for Iranians; for non Iranians; for anyone who wants to know the real Iran.
  Effective change can not come in Iran without fully understanding Iranians themselves and especially their patriotism for their country, despite who is currently governing their land. The Cypress Tree brings that understanding to our fingertips.