jalal Al Ahmad, Son of a Shi'ite clergyman, was born in 1923 in Tehran. His early education consisted of the normal Iranian curriculum in the 1930s as well as study of the French and English languages; he used both these languages extensively later in translating major western works into Persian and in carrying out research into the sociology, anthropology, and dialectology of some of the remote areas of Iran. As a youth, Al Ahmad was actively involved in the Tudeh Party, especially between 1944 and 1948 before the Party was forced underground by the Pahlavi regime. Between 1951 and 1953, Al Ahmad supported the nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddeq. After the fall of Mosaddeq, however, he served as the unofficial spokesperson for the 1950s and 1960s dissident intelligentsia. As such he wrote short stories, novels, and essays and in the strongest critical format possible criticized the regime of the Shah, who had been reinstalled in Iran by the America's Central Intelligence Agency. Al Ahmad's last years were devoted to the creation of a government in Iran that would return the country to true independence, self-sufficiency, and a long-awaited prosperity. In 1950, Al-Ahmad married with Simin Daneshvar another young and enrgic writer. However, he did not live long enough to see the fruit of his endeavours. Al Ahmad died in 1969; according to his wife, Simin Daneshvar, poisoned by the agents of the regime. Between 1945 and 1962, Al Ahmad wrote five major collections of short stories, three novels, and an essay. The themes of the collections are diverse. Prominent among them, however, are the superstitious beliefs of the common people, recorded in their own language; excesses of the clergy in their exploitation of the visible aspects of the religion instead of devotion to the teachings and the dogma; and intrusion of western ideas into Iran's predominantly Shi'ite ideology. Al Ahmad's novella, The Headmaster, exposes the life of the Iranian educators of his time. It is not a portrait that one would want to present to the public but one that he, as a teacher, was fully familiar with and wanted his countrymen to become acquainted with. Only exposition of the ills of the system, he believed, can force people to seek a remedy for the malaise. At first glance, the works of Al Ahmad, especially his characters, do not dazzle the reader. But once familiar with his sarcasm, cynicism, and humor one can hardly put his collections of short stories down. He writes, as Kamshad Aptly says, with a conviction that is unique to him Ahmad Shamlou adores this very conviction in his "Anthem." Before being turned to ashes by the wrath of the thunderbolt, he had forced the steer of the tempest to kneel before his might. To test the faith of old he had worn out his teeth on the locks of ancient gates. On the most out-of-the way paths he struggled, an unexpected passer-by whose voice every thicket and bridge recognized. Al Ahmad's 1962 essay called "Weststruckness" or "Fascination with the West" is even more critical of the regime. Addressing Iran's mounting social problems directly for the first time in Iranian literature, "Weststruckness" takes western intrusion into Iran's traditional Islamic educational system to task. Teaching about the various ways to serve a hot dog to students who have never seen a hot dog, Al Ahmad says, is a waste of time for both the teacher and his wards. In addition to his literary activities, Al Ahmad contributed to the understanding of sociological and cultural aspects of far-off regions of Iran such as Awrazan and the Khark Island. His research, even though he was neither a trained sociologist or a cultural studies expert, leads the way to a better understanding of those regions of Iran. Finally, Al Ahmad has translated a number of important works from French into Persian. These include Dostoevsky's The Gambler, Camus's L'Etranger, and Sartre's Les Mains Sales. Ahmad's 1962 essay called "Weststruckness" or "Fascination with the West" is even more critical of the regime. Addressing Iran's mounting social problems directly for the first time in Iranian literature, "Weststruckness" takes western intrusion into Iran's traditional Islamic educational system to task. Teaching about the various ways to serve a hot dog to students who have never seen a hot dog, Al Ahmad says, is a waste of time for both the teacher and his wards

Bozorg Alavi (born Seyyed Mojtaba Alavi) was born in Tehran, Iran. He was the third of six children. His father, Abul Hassan Alavi, took part in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution and later published (with Hassan Taqizadeh) the progressive newsletter Kaveh (Kaweh) in Germany. Bozorg Alavi had his primary schooling in Tehran. In 1922 he was sent to Berlin along with his older brother Morteza, to study. Upon his return to Iran in 1927, he first taught German in Shiraz and later in Tehran. During these years he met and befriended Sadegh Hedayat. Around this time he became active in the meetings held by Dr. Erani and was one of the famous 53 persons who were jailed in 1937 under the regime of Reza Shah for communist acitivies. Alavi himself claimed that he was not involved politically at the time and simply was in a group of literati, who among other things read communist writings. He was given a 7-year sentence, but was released after 4 years in 1941 after a general amnesty following the Allied control of Iran. Upon his release he published his Scrap Papers of Prison and Fifty Three Persons, and continued his political activities, becoming a founding member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran and serving as editor of its publication Mardom (People). Alavi was in Germany when the 1953 Coup d'état overthrew the government of Premier Mossadegh and resulted in massive arrests and imprisonment. Alavi stayed in exile in East Berlin, teaching at Humboldt University, until the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty and the emergence of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In spring of 1979 he returned briefly to Iran after 25 years in exile and was warmly received by the Iranian Writers Association, including such writers/poets as Ahmad Shamlou, Mahmoud Dolatabadi, Siavash Kasraie and others. He returned to Iran a year later in 1980 for another short visit and was dismayed by the repressive turn of the revolution. He continued to lived and work in Berlin, visiting Iran for the last time in 1993. He died in Berlin in 1997

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.

sadeq Hedayat, the foremost short story writer of Iran, was born in 1903. He was of a highly educated aristocratic family. After finishing his primary education, he was sent to a French school to study French. He received his secondary education there, and was sent to Europe on a government scholarship to study dentistry. He shortly gave up dentistry for engineering, and engineering for the study of pre-Islamic languages and ancient culture of Iran. In Europe, Hedayat was exposed to world literature, especially European literature, and read the works of Kafka, Poe, and Dostoevski. In his solitude, he became extremely self-conscious and devoted a great deal of his time to the problem of life and death. He studied the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and was impressed by Rilke's adoration of death so immensely that he wrote his own commentary on Death in 1927. He even tried to commit suicide in the same year by drowning himself in the river Marne, but he was rescued. He wrote collections of short stories and a novella, The Blind Owl, which is regarded as Hedayat's masterpiece and has been translated in many languages. It took him almost a decade to prepare this novella which he finally published in 1937 in India. It could not be published inside Iran until 1941. Most of Hedayat's works, especially the ones that he wrote in the 1940s, are realistic works. However, Hedayat was fundamentally a romanticist, irresistibly drawn to death and fascinated by the glories of the past. He was preoccupied with social and ethical concerns and wrote collections of short stories - each one around a central theme. He examined the themes of justice, trust, change, and determinism in the stories which he wrote primarily in the late 1920s and 1930s. Denial of justice was a concern of such importance that he wrote a commentary on the translation of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, entitled the Message of Kafka. This is the most representative piece of Hedayat's scholarly writing in which he uses simple syntax and discusses a very difficult and complex issue - man's role in the cosmos - with literary skill and philosophical understanding. His preoccupation with Justice also influenced his choice of works to translate, for example Jean Paul Sartre's The Wall and Kafka's Before the Law. Another theme which attracted Hedayat was the status of women in a male-dominated, traditional society like Iran. The best example how he deals with this theme is a short story entitled Story With A Moral, which was written in the form of Hekayat, and deserves full attention and needs to be analyzed for structure, theme, and symbolism in order to show Hedayat's skill in making use of symbolism and examining complex social and political themes. Hedayat's language is both literary and scholarly. In addition to his novella and short stories, he was the first person to conduct serious and methodical research on the folklore of Iran. He also studied the ancient Iranian languages and wrote essays about archaeology, anthropology and linguistics. Satire was also Hedayat's language. In his fiction, he criticizes the social and political problems of his society - criticism which is very often expressed in satirical form. Hedayat gradually improved his writing skill and developed a talent for philosophical, social, and eventually political themes. His career reached its peak in the late 1930s when he finished preparing his novella. However, in the 1940s it was obvious that he could not produce anything substantial. He became increasingly frustrated to the point that abusive criticism replaced artistic criticism in his works. His inability to create the literary works that his public expected drove him deeper into depression. He finally decided to leave Iran and go back to Paris, where he had started his career. However, postwar Paris was not the Paris he had experienced in the 1920s. He made his last decision. He attempted suicide again; this time he succeeded, on April 4, 1951. At the time of his death, he had become recognized as the foremost modern prose author of Iran

Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, the founder of the European-style Persian short-story genre, was born in Isfahan into a middle-class family. The date of his birth is debated; years between 1892 to 1896 are mentioned. At the end of his life, even he himself was not quite sure of the exact year. The year 1895 has been traditionally used as his day of birth. Jamalzadeh's father, Sayyid Jamal al-Din Isfahani, was a progressive mullah who rose against despotism and delivered fiery speeches against the government, speeches which inspired his son but landed himself in prison where he was poisoned. Young Jamalzadeh, however, lived in Iran only until the age of twelve or thirteen. Thereafter, he lived in Lebanon where he attended the Antoura Catholic School (1908) near Beirut, in France (1910), and in Switzerland. There, he read law at the University of Lauzanne and later on at Dijon. After his father's death, Jamalzadeh's life became somewhat difficult but, thanks to his many friends who supported him and to occasional students who paid him tuition, he survived starvation. By the time that World War I came around, he was in his early youth. He joined the group of nationalists in Berlin and, in 1915, founded a newspaper (Rastakhiz) for it in Baghdad. He also cooperated with the journal Kaveh (1916). In 1917, he published his first book entitled Ganj-e Shaygan (The Worthy Treasure). An overview of Iran of the turn of the century, Ganj-e Shaygan deals with Iran's socio-political as well economics, a major contribution gapping the distance between literature and the sciences. In the same year, he also represented the Nationalists at the World Congress of Socialists in Stockholm. His later year, until 1931 when he picked up residence in Geneva and worked for the International Labour Office are spent in make-shift jobs such as working for the Iranian embassy in Berlin. During all these years, Jamalzadeh had very little contact with Iran. But that did not prevent him from learning Persian on his own. Rather, drawing on his meager experiences gained at a tender age, he wrote about the lives of his contemporary Iranians. His preoccupation with language use and his Dickensian style including repetitions, pile up of adjectives, and popular phrases quickly remind the reader of his background and of his sincerity to contribute. Yet his very distance from the sources of events described compromises the accuracy of his works. His disregard for form and lack of a desire to revisit his works and make revisions compounds the difficulty. Jamalzadeh's major work is entitled Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time). Published in 1921 in Berlin, Once Upon a Time did not reach Iran until a year later. And when it did, it was not received favorably at all. The public, especially the clergy, loathed Jamalzadeh's portrayal of their country to the degree that copies of the book were burned in public squares. A collection of six short stories, Once Upon a Time deals with the socio-political situation of Iran at the beginning of the 20th century, a subject that thus far had been outside the purview of poets and writers in general. Furthermore, mingled with this is a considerable degree of militancy against Western intrusion in Iran and an open mockery of Islamic fanaticism. The simple, colloquial style, with a exact degree of humor, enhanced the impact, making the import of stories like "Farsi Shekar Ast" (Persian is Sugar) even more poignant. This reaction affected Jamalzadeh to the degree that for the next twenty years he refrained from engaging in any literary activities. He began writing again in the 1940s, but by that time he had lost the dexterity that imparted conciseness, novelty of form, originality of ideas, a biting sense of humor, and a tight structure to his earlier stories. Tautology, a tendency toward using sage remarks, mystical and philosophical speculation and disregard for order became the hallmark of his later endeavors. Sahraye Mahshar (1947), Talkho Shirin (1955), Kuhna va Now (1959), Ghair az Khudo Hichkas Nabud (1961), Asmano Risman (1965), Qissahai Kutah Baraye Bachchehaye Rishdar (1974), and Qissai Ma ba Akhar Rasid (1979) were written during this phase of his literary activity. Jamalzadeh only begins the debate on the dilemma of Western-educated Iranians returning from abroad. For a long time thereafter, the reaction to these innocent youths' selfless endeavor to apply themselves and support their home and country constitutes a major chapter of the history of short story in Iran of Reza Shah. Neither at home nor in society do we find an appreciation of the efforts expended by these youth. Similarly, Jamalzadeh's criticism of the court and the clergy continues. Some of the works lack Jamalzadeh's unique Persian style, of course, but they can be as biting and accurate. Hedayat's works, especially his Pearl Cannon, are devoted to a parody of the twin pillars of Iranian government. In addition to Persian, Jamalzadeh also knew French, German, and Arabic and translated many books from these languages into Persian. The third phase of Jamalzadeh's literary activities is even less weighty than the second. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he returned to Iran. There, making a180-degree turn, he supported the changes brought about by Khomeini and praised the clergy in numerous interviews. Jamalzadeh died on November 9, 1997.