Gholam Hossein Saedi

Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi
Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi
Born	1936 Tabriz, Iran
Died	1985 Paris, France
Occupation	Writer

Gholām-Hossein Sā'edi MD (Persian: غلامحسین ساعدی‎‎, also transliterated as Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi and Ghulamhusayn Sa'idi; January 4, 1936 in Tabriz – November 23, 1985 in Paris) was a prolific Iranian writer. He has published over forty books, representing his talents in the fiction genres of drama (under the pen name Gohar Morad or Gowhar Murad according to Library of Congress transliteration]), the novel, the screenplay, and the short story in addition to the non-fiction genres of cultural criticism, travel literature and ethnography. Many consider the screenplay for Gav ("The Cow"),Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film, to be Sa'edi's magnum opus as it ushered in the New Wave Iranian cinema. After the 1979 revolution and his subsequent exile, he maintained an important figure in the scene of Persian literature despite the Iranian diaspora of which he unwillingly became a part. Till his death in Paris, due to depression and related alcoholism, he remained one of the most prominent and prolific of Iranian writers and intellectuals internationally.

Sa'edi was born in Tabriz, Iran, the cultural and economic center of the northwestern Iranian region of Azerbaijan, to Tayyebe and Ali Asghar Sa'edi. His father, who belonged to the Sa'ed ol-Mamalek clan, worked as a government administrator. The family lived in relative poverty. His older sister died when she was eleven months old, but he grew up with a younger brother and sister. In 1941, after the Soviet Union invaded Tabriz, he and his family fled to a village. There, Sa'edi became fascinated with the culture of rural Iran. As a boy he was an avid reader fascinated particularly by writings of Anton Chekhov. It was in those days, he wrote many years later, that his "eyes suddenly opened."