We Heard the Heavens Then (A Memoir of Iran)

A piercing look at revolution through the wide-open eyes of a child, this is the true story of an extraordinary father/son relationship imperiled by Iran’s ominous and drastically changing political climate.

Aria Minu-Sepehr was raised in a sheltered world of extraordinary privilege as the son of a major general in the Shah’s Imperial Iranian Air Force. The 1970s were the end result of half a century of Westernization in Iran, and Aria’s father was the man of the hour. But when the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah rose to power in 1979, Aria’s idyllic life skidded to a halt. The surreal began to invade the mundane, pictures of executed family friends soon covered the newspaper, and ten-year-old Aria was thrust into the terrorized world of adults. In this critically acclaimed and deeply moving memoir, Minu-Sepehr takes us into the heart of the revolution when a boy’s hero, once held up as the nation’s pride, became a hunted man.