Iranian · b. 1957
Abbas Maroufi is an Iranian novelist, short story writer and editor. Born in Tehran, he worked as a writer and journalist in Iran and founded the literary magazine Gardoon, which became a notable forum for Iranian writers. It faced repeated pressure from the censors. His first novel, Symphony of the Dead, appeared in Persian in 1989 and tells of two feuding brothers in a story that recalls Cain and Abel. It was published in German in 1998 as Symphonie der Toten, translated by Anneliese Ghahraman-Beck for Suhrkamp. After years of conflict with the authorities over censorship, Maroufi left Iran in 1996 and has lived in exile in Germany since. His books have been translated into German and other languages, and his work deals with family strife, violence and the experience of displacement. He is best known among German-language readers, where critics have reviewed his novels in major newspapers.