Mohammad Madjlessi

Mohammad Madjlessi (, also romanized Mohammad Majlesi; 1930 – 3 January 2021) was an Iranian writer, poet, radio scriptwriter and translator. Over his career he translated more than 70 works of French and Russian literature into Persian, including Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.

Life Madjlessi as a young man, 1953, before his arrest and exile to Kharg Island. Madjlessi was born in 1930 (1309 SH) in Isfahan.

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. 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. He was buried in the section reserved for renowned figures at the Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery in Isfahan.

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

From Russian 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 The Lady of the Camellias – Alexandre Dumas fils A Very Easy Death – Simone de Beauvoir The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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