Shokoofeh Azar

Shokoofeh Azar was born in Iran in 1972, just 7 years before the Islamic revolution. Despite spending most of her childhood and early career in a relatively hostile environment for independent writing, Shokoofeh’s early interest in writing and art was sparked by her father who was an Iranian intellectual, author, poet and artist. She studied literature at high school and university, later working as a journalist for an independent newspaper for 14 years.

As well as having numerous short stories, reports, interviews and articles published in the Iranian media, her other publications include two collections of short stories: one children’s book; and a Companion in Writing and Editing Essays in the Persian Literary Encyclopedia, which won the prize for The Best Book in Iran in 1997.

In 2004, Shokoofeh became the first Iranian woman to backpack and hitchhike along the Silk Road: from Iran to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan and India. Reports and photos of this 3-month journey were published in an Iranian newspaper, to great acclaim.

In 2011, with independent reporting increasingly coming under threat, Shokoofeh was forced to leave Iran with her family and was accepted as a political refugee by Australia. Shokoofeh is a shining star of Iranian literature, bringing deep resonances of Iranian tradition into the Western world, and profoundly affecting her readers with philosophical and existential illuminations.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is Azar’s first novel to be translated into English. She lives in Geelong.