SAMAD BEHRANGI

Popularly known as Behrang, he won two international literary awards for his story of "The Little Black Fish".*

Behrangi's career was tragically cut short, when in 1968; he drowned in a river near his home town.

Born in 1939, in the poorest part of Tabriz, the capital of the province of Azerbaijan in Iran, Behrang became aware of the deprivation of the majority of the Iranian people at a very early age. He was a lifelong fighter against the causes of poverty and injustice, the lack of educational facilities and the oppression of the ruling class. In 1956 Behrang started teaching children in the small villages and towns near Tabriz. He dedicated his life to the poor and consequently established contact with the underground resistance movement. Despite this involvement he openly wrote about his dealings with the Iranian secret police, most notably in "Research into the Educational Problems of Iran".

Behrang used many pseudonyms during his career, finally gaining a world-wide reputation and the rank of working class hero under this name. Between 1954 and his death, he published twelve children's stories, seven social and political studies, four translations into and from Turkish, as well as valuable studies into Azerbaijani language and culture. The French translation of “The Little Black Fish” in the early 1980s met with great success.

*At the Bologna International Book Fair in Italy and at the Bratislava Book Biennial Czechoslovakia.