Cyrus Cylinder

Nicholas Hazel the author of this novel has served as a faculty member and administrator in colleges and universities and is the author of scholarly books and articles In retirement he has continued to admire universities for their creation and dissemination of knowledge while at the same time realizing that they are also institutions where political aspirations and tensions are played out and where strong even violent human passions can rage underneath the surface of the impartial searching for the truth He is fascinated by the ways in which history can impinge on the present through our interpretations and reconstructions or deliberate distortions of what once occurred Nicholas Hazel has spun this yarn around an ancient politically motivated artifact the Cyrus Cylinder inscribed in 539 BCE which also in recent years has been used for political purposes In this story it becomes the catalyst for contemporary international intrigue and also for purely personal settling of scores During a visit to the United States to participate in the centennial celebration of a higher education association a descendent and namesake of King Cyrus now the chancellor of the University of Tehran confronts and is confronted by what happened twenty years ago as well as what is happening today