Abbas Marouf, renowned writer and publisher, passes away
The Berlin Hedayat House announced on Thursday morning, September 1, that Abbas Marouf, a writer and publisher in exile who had been suffering from cancer in recent years, had died at the age of 65.
Abbas Marouf first announced his diagnosis of cancer in September 2020, and in recent months, news reports have indicated that his condition has worsened.
Mr. Marouf was a student of Houshang Golshiri and Mohammad Ali Sepanloo, whose novel "Symphony of the Dead" (1939) made him famous in the literary world, a novel that is still one of the most widely distributed Persian novels published in Iran.
Abbas Marouf also ran the literary magazine "Gardoon" in the 1960s, where he was repeatedly interrogated for publishing anti-government positions and was eventually forced to leave the country.
After settling in Berlin, Germany, Mr. Marouf founded the Gordoon Publishing House to publish Persian fiction and poetry without censorship, while continuing to write.
In addition to "Symphony of the Dead," which is his most famous novel and has been published in other languages, including English, German, Arabic, and Turkish, his other famous novel is "The Year of Turmoil," which was first published in 1992 and has since been on the bestseller list of Qoqnoos Publishing, the publisher of Abbas Marouf's works in Iran.
Abbas Marouf, who was born in Tehran in 1936, published his first collection of stories, "Facing the Sun," in 1970. After that, he continued writing alongside his activities in the Iranian Writers' Association until 1980, when he founded the literary magazine "Gardoon" and became its editor-in-chief.
The magazine's activities led to several interrogations and ultimately the magazine's closure, as Marouf was famously following the renewed activity of the Iranian Writers' Association on the subject.
After the seizure of "Gardoon", Abbas Marouf traveled to Germany via Pakistan and after a while, with the support of the "Heinrich Böll House", he succeeded in establishing the "Hedayat House of Art and Literature" in Berlin, along with selling books and publishing literary works.
The number of literary works published by the Gordun Publishing House, mostly by Iranian writers in exile, reaches about three hundred titles.
Abbas Marouf was also the founder of three literary awards in exile: "Qalam Zarrin Gardoon", "Qalam Zarrin Zamaneh", and "Tirgan Literary Award".
