Mohammad Madjlessi

• Name — Mohammad Madjlessi • Native Name — محمد مجلسی • Born — 1930 • Birthplace — Isfahan, Iran • Died — 3 January 2021 • Place of death — Isfahan, Iran • Resting Place — Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery, Isfahan • Occupation — Translator, writer, poet, radio scriptwriter • Language — Persian • Education — University of Tehran Aix-Marseille University • Notable Works — Persian translations of Les Misérables, Jean-Christophe, Anna Karenina

• Illustration — Madjlessi as a young man, c.1953, before his arrest and exile to Kharg Island. Madjlessi was born in 1930 (1309 SH) in Isfahan. He studied law at the University of Tehran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the young communist poet was arrested at the age of 23 for his political opinions and later exiled to Kharg Island together with other political prisoners, intellectuals and worker activists of the Tudeh Party of Iran. His fellow prisoner, the translator Karim Keshavarz, recalls "Majlesi, the young poet" among the detainees from Isfahan in his prison diary published in 1984. After his release he worked as a journalist and novelist. For more than twenty years he wrote the nightly radio serial Dastan-e Shab ("Night Story"), one of the most widely followed daily programmes of Radio Iran, heard across Persian-speaking countries of the region. As early as September 1962, Radio Iran's monthly magazine pictured him at his desk among the five staff writers of the programme, then broadcast nightly at 10 p.m. with a cast of more than thirty actors. He completed a doctorate in law at Aix-Marseille University in Aix-en-Provence, France, defending a thesis in 1974 on Franco-Iranian relations in the era of Napoleon I, supervised by André Viala. In the last years of the monarchy he emigrated to Toulouse, France, and returned to Iran after the 1979 revolution. He was one of the founding members of the Council of Writers and Artists of Iran. Turning to translation, Madjlessi rendered into Persian more than 70 works, mainly of French and Russian literature, by authors including Victor Hugo, Romain Rolland, Leo Tolstoy, André Gide, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig and Chinghiz Aitmatov. His translations of Aitmatov are credited with introducing the Kyrgyz writer to Iranian readers. In his final days he was working on a new Persian translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, which remained unfinished. • Illustration — Madjlessi's grave at the Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery in Isfahan. The last line is a verse in his own hand: "If you come tomorrow, we shall be here no more, O Liberty!" Madjlessi died on 3 January 2021 (14 Dey 1399 SH) in his native Isfahan. A line of his own verse, in his own hand, is inscribed on his gravestone: «فردا اگر بیایی، ما نیستیم دیگر، ای آزادی!» ("If you come tomorrow, we shall be here no more, O Liberty!"). He was buried in the section reserved for renowned figures at the Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery in Isfahan. Upon his death, the French Embassy in Iran paid tribute to "the eminent Iranian translator who played a considerable role in conveying French works, especially those of Victor Hugo, to Persian-speaking audiences".

Madjlessi translated more than 70 works into Persian, most of them published by Donya-ye No. Among the best known are:

• Anna Karenina and Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy • The Queen of Spades – Alexander Pushkin • Jamila, The Mark of Cassandra, The White Ship and The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years – Chinghiz Aitmatov

• Les Misérables and Ninety-Three – Victor Hugo • Jean-Christophe and Vie de Beethoven – Romain Rolland • Persian Letters – Montesquieu • La Symphonie pastorale – André Gide • The Lady of the Camellias – Alexandre Dumas fils • A Very Easy Death – Simone de Beauvoir • The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• The Royal Game and Letter from an Unknown Woman – Stefan Zweig (German) • Barnaby Rudge – Charles Dickens (English) • Alamut – Vladimir Bartol (Slovene)