Simin Daneshvar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Simin Dāneshvar
سیمین دانشور
Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery
NationalityIranian
Alma materUniversity of Tehran
Stanford University
Occupation(s)Academic, novelist, fiction writer, literary translator
SpouseJalal Al-e-Ahmad (1950−1969, his death)

Simin Dāneshvar[3] (Persian: سیمین دانشور‎; 28 April 1921 – 8 March 2012) was an Iranian[4] academic, novelist, fiction writer, and translator.

She was largely regarded as the first major Iranian woman novelist. Her books dealt with the lives of ordinary Iranians, especially those of women, and through the lens of recent political and social events in Iran at the time.

translator, a few of her translations were "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov and "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her last book is currently lost and was supposed to be the last book of her trilogy which started with "the lost island". Al-Ahmad and Daneshvar never had a child.[8]

Early life

Simin Daneshvar was born on 28 April 1921 in Shiraz, Iran. Her father, Mohammad Ali Daneshvar, was a physician. Her mother was a painter. Daneshvar attended the English bilingual school, Mehr Ain. Daneshvar then entered the Persian literature department at the University of Tehran in the fall of 1938. In 1941, her third year of university, her father died, and to support herself she began writing pieces for Radio Tehran as the "Nameless Shirazi". She wrote about cooking and food as well as other things. She also began writing for the foreign affairs section of a newspaper in Tehran, since she could translate from English.

Literary career

Daneshvar started her literary life in 1935, when she was in the eighth grade.

Fulbright Fellow working on creative writing at Stanford University with Wallace Stegner. While there, she wrote in English and published two short stories. When she returned to Iran, she joined the faculty at University of Tehran.[9]

She had to translate many books in order to support her household, often was earning more than Jalal. In 1961, she published "Shahri chun behesht" (A city like paradise), twelve years after her first short story collection. In 1963, she attended the

Suvashun, was published. Her husband died that same year, in their summer home on the Caspian Sea
.

Daneshvar and Al-e-Ahmad were unable to have children, which was a topic that Jalal Al-e-Ahmad wrote about in several of his works.[citation needed] Daneshvar continued teaching as an associate professor in the university, later becoming the chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, from the 1970s until her retirement in 1981.[13][9]

Death

Daneshvar was hospitalized in Tehran for acute respiratory problems in 2005. She was released after one month in August 2005. She died at her home in Tehran on 8 March 2012 after a bout with influenza.[14] Her body was buried on 11 March at Behesht-e Zahra. (It had been announced that her body would be buried in Firouzabadi mosque in Ray next to her husband, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, but this was later denied.)

Works

As an author and translator, Daneshvar wrote sensitively about the lives of Iranian women.

Daneshvar's most successful work, Savushun,[15][16] a novel about settled and tribal life in and around her home-town of Shiraz, was published in 1969. One of the best-selling Persian novels, it has undergone at least sixteen reprints and has been translated into many languages. She also contributed to the periodicals Sokhan and Alefba.[17]

In 1981, she completed a monograph on

Jalal Al-e Ahmad
, Ghoroub-e Jalal (The sunset of Jalal's days).

Daneshvar's stories reflect reality rather than fantasy. They contain themes such as child theft, adultery, marriage, childbirth, sickness, death, treason, profiteering, illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and loneliness. The issues she deals with are the social problems of the 1960s and 1970s, which have immediacy and credibility for the reader. Her inspiration is drawn from the people around her. In her own words: "Simple people have much to offer. They must be able to give freely and with peace of mind. We, too, in return, must give to them to the best of our abilities. We must, with all our heart, try to help them acquire what they truly deserve."[18]

In Language of Sleep, a biography play which attempts to portray the lives of two great female authors, German-Romanian novelist

Herta Muller and herself Simin Daneshvar was written by Mona Ahmadi.[19]

Library resources about
Simin Daneshvar
By Simin Daneshvar

Publications/Novels/Books

  • Savushun, 1969.
    • Sou Va Shoun سووشون (Farsi Edition), 1970.
    • Savushun English translation, 1990.[20]
  • Selection [Entekhāb], 2007.
  • the trilogy Wandering [Sargardāni]
    • Wandering Island (Island of Wandering) [Jazire-ye Sargardāni], 1992.
    • Wandering Cameleer [Sāreban Sargardān], 2001.
    • Wandering Mountain [Kuh-e Sargardān] (never published, unknown reason)*[21]
    • The Israeli Republic: An Iranian Revolutionary's Journey to the Jewish State, 2017 (Contributing author).
      ISBN 978-1-632-06139-3
    • Island of Bewilderment: A Novel of Modern Iran (Middle East Literature In Translation), 2022.
      ISBN 978-0-815-61147-9

Short story collections

  • The Quenched Fire [Atash-e Khamoosh] (1948)
  • A City Like Paradise [Shahri Chun Behesht] (1961)
  • To Whom Shall I Say Hello? [Be Ki Salaam Konam?] (1980)

Translations by Daneshvar

Translations of Daneshvar's works

See also

References

  1. ^ Pouria Mirzazadeh (1921-04-28). "Simin Daneshvar: Influential author has died". Iranian.com. Archived from the original on 2018-12-25. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
  2. ^ "سیمین دانشور در سن ۹۰ سالگی درگذشت" Archived 2012-03-11 at the Wayback Machine (in Persian). Hamshahri Online. 8 March 2012.
  3. ^ Simin (سیمین) means "silvery, lustrous" or "fair", and Dāneshvar (دانشور) is a combination of dānesh (دانش) "knowledge, science" and -var (-ور), a suffix indicative of one's profession or vocation, the combined form meaning "learned person, scholar".
  4. ^ "The iconic Persian writer Simin Daneshvar Passes Away in Tehran". www.payvand.com. Archived from the original on 2021-02-25. Retrieved 2019-07-25.
  5. ISSN 0140-0460
    . Retrieved 2020-04-30.
  6. ^ A Persian Requiem by Simin Daneshvar Archived 2012-04-11 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "Simin Daneshvar, first Iranian female novelist who created masterpieces". Islamic Republic News Agency.
  8. ^ Daneshvar's Playhouse: A Collection of Stories - Fiction Books Translated from Persian From Iran Archived 2007-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ a b c "Persian Language & Literature: Simin Daneshvar". www.iranchamber.com. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
  10. ^ "Simin Daneshvar: Death of the storyteller". ALJAZEERA.
  11. ^ "Simin Daneshvar obituary". The Guardian.
  12. ^ "Jalal Al-e Ahmad: The last Muslim intellectual". Middle East Eye.
  13. ^ a b c Lerch, Wolfgang Günter (March 10, 2012). "Die Erste: Zum Tod der Dichterin Simin Daneschwar". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German) (60): 33.
  14. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2023-02-09.
  15. ^ In the introduction to Savushun: A novel about modern Iran (Mage Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991), one reads: "Savushun, the title of the novel, is a folk tradition, surviving in Southern Iran from an undatable pre-Islamic past, that conjures hope in spite of everything."
  16. Khorasan Province
    .
  17. ^ "Simin Daneshvar's Savushun in Italian". Financial Tribune.
  18. ^ Maryam Mafi, afterword to Daneshvar's Playhouse, pp. 179-180
  19. ^ "Authors Simin Daneshvar, Herta Muller to link up in "Language of Sleep"". Tehran Times.
  20. ^ Daneshvar, Simin (1990). Savushun. Translated by
    LCCN 90005608
    . Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  21. ^ More info at "Kuh-e Sargardān" article, Persian Wikipedia

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simin_Daneshvar&oldid=1215598198"