Biography

Simin Daneshvar was born on April 28, 1921 in Shiraz, Persia [now Shiraz, Iran]. Simin was a writer, known for Suvashun (2025), Zelzele-ye dovom (1977) and Savushun (2001). Simin was married to Jalal Al-E Ahmad. Simin died on March 8, 2012 in Teheran, Iran.

In the 1950s and 1960s, she translated the works of Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Friedrich Schnitzler, William Saroyan, and other writers.

During her two year Fulbright Fellowship at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, she studied under Wallace Stegner. She returned to Iran and taught art history at Tehran University. She was considered potentially dangerous and never earned a full professorship because of her left views.

After she obtained her doctorate with a dissertation entitled "Beauty as Treated in Persian Literature," she married leftist writer and social critic, Jalal Al-e Ahmad.

She attended an English language school and in eighth grade published her first article, "Winter Is Not Unlike Our Life," in a local newspaper. She studied Tehran University where she planned to study Persian literature. After her father's death, she left school to work for Radio Tehran because of her English fluency. She wrote short stories.

Simple people have much to offer. 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.