Abbas Maroufi, Renowned Writer and Publisher, Passes Away
The Hedayat House Berlin announced on Thursday morning, September 1st, that Abbas Maroufi, a writer and publisher in exile who had been suffering from cancer in recent years, passed away at the age of 65.
Abbas Maroufi first announced his cancer diagnosis in September 2020, and in recent months there had been reports of his deteriorating health.
Mr. Maroufi was a student of Houshyar Golshiri and Mohammad Ali Sepanloo. His novel “Symphony of the Dead” (1989) brought him fame in the literary world, a novel that remains one of the most widely published Persian novels distributed within Iran.
Abbas Maroufi also managed the literary magazine “Goroon” in the 1980s, which led to his repeated interrogations due to its publication of anti-government positions. He was eventually forced to leave the country.
After settling in Berlin, Germany, Mr. Maroufi launched Goroon Publishing to publish uncensored Persian fiction and poetry, and continued his own writing alongside this work.
Beyond “Symphony of the Dead,” his most famous novel which has been published in other languages including English, German, Arabic, and Turkish, “Year of the Turmoil” is another celebrated work by Maroufi, first published in 1992 and since then consistently appearing on the bestseller lists of Ghognus Publishers, the publisher of Abbas Maroufi’s works in Iran.
Abbas Maroufi, born in 1957 in Tehran, published his first short story collection titled “Facing the Sun” in 1980 and continued writing while also being active in the Iranian Writers Association until 1990, when he founded the literary magazine “Goroon” and became its editor-in-chief.
The magazine’s activities, as Maroufi pursued the agenda of reactivating the Iranian Writers Association through it, led to several interrogations and ultimately the closure of the magazine.
After “Goroon” was shut down, Abbas Maroufi traveled to Germany via Pakistan and, after some time, with the support of the Heinrich Böll House, managed to establish the “Hedayat House of Art and Literature” in Berlin, alongside which he engaged in bookselling and publishing literary works.
The number of literary works published by Goroon Publishing, most of which belong to Iranian writers in exile, has reached approximately three hundred titles.
Abbas Maroufi was also the founder of three literary prizes in exile named “Goroon Golden Pen,” “Golden Pen of the Era,” and “Tirkgan Literary Prize”.
