Asef Soltanzadeh

Mohammad Asef Soltanzadeh (Persian: محمد آصف سلطان‌زاده‎‎) (also spelled Assef) was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1964, moved to Pakistan, then Iran in 1985, and in 2002, to Denmark. He is a writer specialising in prose and drama. He writes primarily in Persian.

"Discovered by the Iranian writer and critic Hushang Golshiri, he has published his short stories in various literary journals. When his book "We Disappear in Flight" was published in Tehran in 2000, he became famous among experts of literature in the Persian language (one of the literary languages of Afghanistan). In Iran a second volume of his short stories is being published."

His two collections of short stories, We Disappear in Flight and The Deserter won the prestigious Golshiri Award in Iran in 2001.

In 2002, when Afghans were no longer allowed to stay in Iran, he moved to Denmark.

Works

Short stories

His most recent collections of stories, in Persian, are:

• We Disappear in Flight, Tehran: Agah, 2000.
• Newyear's Day Is Delightful Only in Kabul
• Now Denmark
• The Deserter
• You Who Are Here, This Is Not Your Land

Novels

• Eden's Hell (2 binds), Copenhagen: Bita Book, 2009.
• Book of Exodus, Copenhagen: Dyiar-e Ketab, 2011.
• The Cinematographer of Noqrah, Copenhagen: Bita Book, Dec. 2011.
• Alas, Mullah Omar, Copenhagen: Bita Book, 2013.
• The brazen Bulls, Copenhagen: Bita Book, 2014.

Anthologized in

• Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration. Ed. and trans. Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2004.
• "Sohrab's Wars: Counter Discourses of Contemporary Persian Fiction". Ed. and trans. Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami and Pari Shirazi. Costa Mesa, California, Mazda Publishers, Inc., 2008.
• "Herfra min verden går. 23 flersprogede forfattere i Danmark". Copenhagen, Dansk PEN, 2009.
• "Writing from Afghanistan". Ed. and trans. Anders Widmark. at the [2] website.

Awards

• Golshiri Award, 2001 (Golshiri Foundation, Iran) - "for The Best First Collection of Short Stories, chosen for its impressive and macabre themes achieved through seemingly simple and unadorned language strewn with words and expressions from the author's homeland. Soltanzadeh's book has since been translated into French [Assef Soltanzadeh, Perdus dans la fuite, Actes sud, Paris, 2002] and Italian [M. A. Soltanzade, Perduti nella fuga, AIEP Editore, San Marino, 2002]."
• Danish Refugee Council Artist Award, 2003.
• Golshiri Award, 2007 (Golshiri Foundation, Iran) - for The Deserter, Award for the Best Collection of Short Stories.
• Nawrooz Award, 2010 (Kabul, Afghanistan) - for "The Deserter", Award for the Best Collection of Afghan Short Stories of the Decade.

External links

for further reading:

• Nation, War and Exile as Portrayed in Afghan Diasporic Fiction: The Case of Muhammad Asef Soltanzadeh, lecture by Dr. Mir Hekmatullah Sadat at the "Afghanistan in Ink: Literatures of Nation, War, and Exile" conference, January 14, 2010. UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Posted January 2010. Consulted 5 September 2010.
• Afghanistan in Ink: Literatures of Nation, War, and Exile, by Wali Ahmadi (UC Berkeley), "Afghanistan in Ink: Literatures of Nation, War, and Exile" conference at UCLA, January 14, 2010. UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Consulted 5 September 2010.
• Brief summary on the author and his story, We Disappear in Flight The Grinnell College Libraries Favorite Books and Book Review blog. Consulted 5 September 2010.
• Review and excerpt from Perduti nella fuga in Sagarana, novi libri, with a brief biography of the author as well (in Italian). Sagarana, rivista letteraria trimestrale, No. 10, January 2003.
• Brief biography at the 2010 International Literature Festival of Lviv website (in Ukrainian).
• Biography of the author at the World Wide Words Festival of Denmark website (in Danish). Archived.