- M.R. Gahanoonpavar
- University of Texas at Austin
- "The Life and Fiction of Simin Behbahani"
M. R. Ghanoonparvar is Professor of Persian and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught at the University of Isfahan, the University of Virginia, and the University of Arizona and was a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Prophets of Doom: Literature as a Socio-Political Phenomenon in Modern Iran (1984), In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction (1993), Translating the Garden (2001), and Reading Chubak (2005). His translations include Jalal Al-e Ahmad's By the Pen, Sadeq Chubak's The Patient Stone, Simin Daneshvar's Savushun, and Sadeq Hedayat's The Myth of Creation and his edited volumes include Iranian Drama: An Anthology, In Transition: Essays on Culture and Identity in Middle Eastern Societies, Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi's Othello in Wonderland and Mirror-Polishing Storytellers, and Moniru Ravanipur's Satan Stones and Kanizu. His forthcoming book is The Neighbor Says: The Letters of Nima Yushij.- AbstractThis paper addresses an important, usually neglected aspect of the work of Simin Behbahani, namely her prose and fictional, mostly autobiographical writings, which should be indispensable for an understanding of her poetry. With an examination of An Mard, Mard-e Hamraham [That Man, My Companion], Ba Qalb-e Khod Cheh Kharidam [What I Bought with My Heart], and Kelid-o Khanjar [Key and Dagger], it will explore the link between her poetry and fictional prose, especially in terms of her life story.
