16 Facts About Bahman Sholevar

Bahman Sholevar is an Iranian-American novelist, poet, translator, critic, psychiatrist and political activist.

Bahman Sholevar writes in five languages, namely, Persian, English, Spanish, Italian, and French.

Bahman Sholevar was born in Tehran on February 6,1941, in a politically conscious family.

Bahman Sholevar's father, born in Tabriz, was the first graduate of the Law School of the University of Tehran.

Bahman Sholevar was a judge, a lawyer, and the publisher and editor of the newspaper Sholevar.

Bahman Sholevar had published a small book of verse in his youth.

Bahman Sholevar finished his elementary and secondary educations in Tehran.

Bahman Sholevar studied medicine at the University of Tehran, but left his studies before receiving his MD degree to accept a diplomatic post in Turkey, as the Economic Secretary of the Central Treaty Organization.

Bahman Sholevar used this position to get the publication permit in Iran for his novel The Night's Journey, a novel which he had written six years earlier but which no publisher had dared to send to the censors' office for a publication permit.

Bahman Sholevar had foreseen that the novel would be banned after publication and that his life would be in danger.

Bahman Sholevar followed specialty training in psychiatry at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and became a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and began teaching at Thomas Jefferson University and other Philadelphia area universities.

Bahman Sholevar has been an elected Fellow of the Philadelphia College of Physicians and an elected member of New York Academy of Sciences.

From 1968 to 1979 Bahman Sholevar was an active and vocal opponent of the Shah's regime and an advocate for freedom and human rights in Iran, until the latter's overthrow by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

In 2007, after 42 years in self-imposed exile, Bahman Sholevar returned to Iran at the invitation of a group of writers and publishers.

Bahman Sholevar extended his self-imposed exile in the United States indefinitely and became a citizen of the United States in 1981.

Bahman Sholevar did not visit Iran again until 2007, after 42 years of absence.