Commemoration Ceremony for Simin Daneshvar

Society for the National Heritage of Iran has organized a commemoration ceremony for acclaimed Persian academic, novelist, fiction writer and translator Simin Daneshvar (1921-2012) on Wednesday.

According to the Persian website Mehr News Agency, the program in Tehran will be attended by writers, university teachers and translators. Some will speak about Daneshvar and her achievements.

Shahid Motahari Meeting Hall, situated at No. 71, Boshiri Street, near Amir Bahador Bridge, Valiasr Street, is the venue of the ceremony.   

Daneshvar, wife of the accomplished novelist and short story writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969), is largely regarded as the foremost female Iranian novelist. She wrote fiction as well as essays on aesthetics and classical Persian literature from the early 1950s. Her major works include “Savushun,” “Wandering Island” and “The Quenched Fire”.

Her most popular novel Savushun (aka Suvashun), which introduced her as a distinct literary voice to reckon with, has been translated into English and 16 other languages. It is set during the British and Soviet occupation of Iran during the Second World War and combines history, memoirs, folklore, myth and personal emotions from a woman’s perspective. House of Daneshvar and Al-e-Ahmad in Tehran’s northern Dezashib neighborhood was turned into a museum in April.