Mortaza Moshfeq Kazemi

Born 1887. Persian writer.

One of the fathers of modern Persian prose, Kazemi worked for the magazine Iran-shahr, published in Berlin from 1924, and later edited the journal Iran-e Javan (Young Iran), in which he published his translations from French. His social novel Dreadful Tehran (part 1, Makhuf was published in Tehran in 1921; part 2, entitled Memories of the Only Night, was published in Berlin in 1924; Russian translations, 1934–36 and 1960) reveals the negative side of life in Iranian society in the 1920’s, depicting women’s lack of rights. The Faded Flower, Precious Envy and other novels are less significant and do not deal with vital social issues.