U.S. translator Paul Sprachman, who is currently working on Amir-Hossein Fardi’s novel “Esmaeil,” will travel Iran to negotiate some parts of the novel with author Fardi.
The 300-page “Esmaeil” tells the story of a man who out of the blue runs into the chaotic environment of the revolution in 1979. The events of the revolution expand his consciousness and he discovers a new ideology for the remainder of his life.
Sprachman translated several novels in the Sacred Defense literature style into English including Ahmad Dehqan’s “Bearing 270 Degrees,” a novel about the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and also “Chess with the Resurrection Machine,” another novel in the Sacred Defense genre authored by Iranian writer Habib Ahmadzadeh.
Several Persian books printed by Sureh-Mehr Publications were selected by Sprachman for translation during his visit to Iran in August 2006.
Sprachman, who is the vice director of the Undergraduate Studies Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, can read and write Persian, Arabic, German, Hindu-Urdu, French, and Latin. He is also somewhat familiar with Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew.
“A Man and Many Worlds: The Notes and Memoirs of Dr. Qasem Ghani,” Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh’s “What’s Sauce for the Goose” and “Once Upon a Time,” Ebrahim Golestan’s “Esmat’s Journey,” and Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s “Plagued by the West” are some of the older works that he has translated.
Sprachman is also the author of “Language and Culture in Persian,” “Discovery Persian: An Elementary and Intermediate Persian Textbook,” “Suppressed Persian: An Anthology of Forbidden Literature,” “Introduction to the Modern Middle East: A Logic of Time and Place,” and “Calligraphy, Commerce, and Spirit in the Art of Dorothy Yung”.
