Untethered: The True Children of Cyrus (Paperback)

Untethered: The True Children of Cyrus is a coming-of-age story that goes beyond the first crush and teenage antics. This story begins in Tehran, in 1977, when a student and his twin sister leave home to attend high school abroad. They move in with their slightly older sister, who runs the household and parents them as only a seventeen-year old can. Unforeseen events force the high school students to fend for themselves in a foreign country while they witness their homeland self-destruct in a misguided, unstoppable revolution that slings it back to the dark ages. News of the Islamic revolution begins as a trickle, then overwhelms them as their country falls into turmoil. Relatives relate vivid stories about the violently changing landscape in their homeland. This is not the story of an immigrant per se, but the story of someone as an involuntary immigrant, a young student who could not return to his country of origin because of the political upheaval taking over his homeland while he attended school halfway around the world. With rarely retold historical facts, Brian Alikhani weaves the current events of the past into the broader picture of the long-lasting implications of Ayatollah Khomeini's stranglehold on Iran and the impact of the revolution on the region and the world.