Simin Daneshvar

Simin Daneshvar (Shiraz, 1921 – Tehran, 2012) was an Iranian academic, novelist and translator, widely regarded as the first major Iranian woman novelist. She wrote in Persian and, at times, in English, and her work gave a new place in literature to ordinary Iranians, especially women, at a time when female authors had little public presence.

The daughter of a physician and a painter, she attended an English bilingual school in Shiraz before entering the Persian literature department of the University of Tehran in 1938. After her father's death in 1941 she supported herself by writing for Radio Tehran under the name "Nameless Shirazi" and by contributing to a Tehran newspaper's foreign affairs section. Her 1948 collection Atash-e khamoosh (Quenched Fire) was the first short story collection by an Iranian woman, though she later refused to reprint it, embarrassed by its youthful style. In 1950 she married the writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and in 1952 she spent a year at Stanford University on a Fulbright fellowship, writing short stories in English.

Back in Iran she taught at the University of Tehran, but she was reportedly blocked from attaining a full professorship, so translation became her main livelihood; at times she earned more than her husband. Her translations include works by Chekhov, Hawthorne and Shaw. Her novel Savushun, set in her native Shiraz, appeared in 1969 and became one of the best-selling Persian novels, translated into many languages. Her realistic fiction deals with child theft, adultery, poverty, illiteracy and loneliness, drawing on people she knew. She chaired the Iranian Writers Union in 1968 and retired from teaching in 1982.

Her legacy rests on her pioneering role as a woman in Iranian letters. She died in Tehran in 2012 and was buried at Behesht-e Zahra.