sadeq Chubak was born in 1916, in the town of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. His father was a bazari merchant. He grew up in Bushehr and Shiraz where he received his early education. Later on he went to Tehran and attended the Alborz College. After college, employed by the Ministry of Education as a teacher, he went to Khorramshahr. He also served a year in the army (1937) as a private and later on as a cadet working in the English translation section. Between 1945, when his writing career began, and 1974, when he went into early retirement, he worked as a librarian for the National Iranian Oil Company. Choubak's first Collection of Short Stories is called Kheymeh Shab Bazi (The Puppet Show). When the collection appeared in 1945, it was received quite favorably by the critics. Kheymeh Shab Bazi is indicative of Choubak's keen insight into the inner motives of human behavior. In 1949, Choubak published his second collection called, Antari Ke Lutiyash Murdeh Bud (The Baboon Whose Buffoon Was Dead). Then there was a gap of some fifteen years before Ruze Avval-i Qabr (The First Day in the Grave) and Akhareen Sadaqeh (The Last Alms) were published in 1965 and 1966, respectively. Choubak's retirement coincided with the onset of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. An atheist since early childhood, he found living in the Islamic Republic difficult. In 1984, therefore, he moved to London, England, first and then to the United States where he picked up residence in California to write his memoirs. Sadeq Choubak died in July 1998 in a hospital at Berkeley, United States. Choubak drew on his ethnic and linguistic background to create unforgettable scenes in both his major novels, Tangsir (1963) and Sang-i Sabur (1966). Similarly important for his creative spirit was the inspiration he received from the works of Sadeq Hedayat, Ernest Hemmingway, William Faulkner, and Henry James. Choubak's writing style is unique in that he uses a minimum of words for the expression of major concepts. Furthermore, he combines originality with mastery in the use of the colloquial language, especially the speech of the natives of the southern provinces of Iran. Choubak has translated Shakespear's Othello, Roland's La Fin du Voyage, and Balzac's Le Pere Goriot into Persian.