Azar Nafisi
Despite its intense past and present, Iran has produced some of the most intelligent writers in modern history. The following four contemporary authors continue to be essential to shaping the viewpoints and the lives of the country, the Middle East, and the perception of Iran in the United States. This is by no means a complete list.
Reza Aslan was born in Tehran in 1972. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Aslan moved to California. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Iowa and the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He wrote about the state of the Islamic way of thinking and the West’s confusion of Islam and vice verse with his two books: No god but God and more recently, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. He has written columns for several publications such as the LA Times and the New York Times.
Azar Nafisi taught at the University of Tehran until the Islamic Revolution. Nafisi left Iran in 1997 and is now a U.S Citizen. Her contemporaries in Iran consider her as a tool of neoconservatism and colonialism. She has written two popular books about the struggles of Iran’s literary culture and the impact of women: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books and Things I’ve Been Silent About. She now teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Nafisi stated in a speech she gave at Seton Hill University in 2009 that “freedom is not just an American thing.”
Abbas Maroufi is well-versed in the Iranian dramatic arts. From 1990 to 1995 he was the editor in chief of the literary magazine, Gardun. His best known works has been considered as a wonderfully striking view of the Iranian family (The Symphony of the Dead) and a touch of Iranian social problems (The Last Superior Generation). He also has experience as a playwright with many of his plays appearing on stage. He successfully uses literary devices, such as stream of consciousness, that has put him into prominence since 1989. He now lives in Germany.
Arash Hejazi originally studied to be a medical doctor in Tehran. His thesis in medical school was about “the influences of storytelling on children's anxiety disorders.” In 1997, he co-founded Caravan Books he is still the editor of the publishing house and also worked as a literary translator. Hejazi’s novel The Princess of the Land of Eternity sold more than 20,000 copies in Iran. A staunch advocate of free speech in Iran, Hejazi is openly against the Iranian government's censorship of books.
Books by Reza Aslan and Azar Nafisi can be checked out by any local library in the Richmond Metro Area. Works by Abba Maroufi and Arash Hejazi will be more difficult to find because of their lack of popularity in the United States.
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