Bozorg Alevi

Born Feb. 2, 1904, in Tehran. Iranian writer.

Bozorg Alevi studied in Germany. His first collection of stories, The Suitcase, was published in 1935. In 1936 he was accused of propagandizing socialist ideas. In prison he wrote stories that were published in the collection Prison Notes (1941). In his memoirs, Fifty-three (1942), he told about the struggle of political prisoners. He was awarded the Gold Medal of Peace for the collection of stories Letters (1951). The novel Her Eyes (1952) was devoted to the organized struggle of the democratic forces of Iran against reaction on the eve of World War II.

Bozorg Alevi frequently uses the method of deep psychological analysis and sometimes lapses into subjectivism. He wrote books on the contemporary situation in Iran (in German: Struggling Iran, 1955; Bloody Oil, 1956; A Country of Roses and Nightingales, 1957). He also was a coauthor of several linguistic works with German scholars (a Persian-German dictionary and a Persian language textbook). Bozorg Alevi also translated some of the works of A. P. Chekhov, F. Schiller, and B. Shaw into Persian.