Bahman Sholevar

Who is Bahman Sholevar?

Bahman Sholevar is an Iranian-American novelist, poet, translator, critic, psychiatrist and political activist. He began writing and translating at age 13. At ages 18 and 19 he translated William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land into Persian, and these still are renowned as two classics of translation in modern Persian literature. In 1967, after his first novel THE NIGHT'S JOURNEY was banned in Iran, he immigrated to the United States and in 1981 he became a dual citizen of the United States and Iran. Although most of his writings in the past 42 years have been in English, published outside Iran; although THE NIGHT'S JOURNEY has never been allowed republication, though sold in thousands of pirated copies; and although the Persian version of his last novel, DEAD RECKONING, has never been given a "publication permit" in Iran, at their latest re-appraisals some Iranian critics have named him "the most influential Persian writer of the past four decades," "one who has had the most influence on the writers of the younger generations."

He has had other careers as diplomat, physician, psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry and of literature, radio and television commentator, and an international lecturer on “the creative process,” and on “the psychology of arts and artists.” In the past 42 years he has divided his time between writing, translating, practicing medicine and psychiatry, teaching literature and psychiatry at various American universities, lecturing around the world, and fighting against tyranny in Iran in general, and for freedom and human rights of Iranian people, especially Iranian women and Iranian writers and artists. He writes in five languages, namely, Persian, English, Spanish, Italian, and French.