Siavash Kasrai

Siavash Kasrai (February 25, 1927 – February 8, 1996; Persian: سیاوش کسرائی) was an Iranian poet, literary critic and novelist. He is well-known for his epic poem of Arash the Archer written in the late 1950s. An active supporter of the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s, he distanced himself from its leadership in 1988–1990, and turned into an outspoken critic in the mid 1990s.

Life

Siavash Kasrai was born on February 25, 1927, in Isfahan, Iran, into a family of officials, some (his uncle Abdol-Karim Kasrai in particular) with a serious interest in literature. In Tehran from an early age, he received his primary education at Adab School and secondary education at the Military College and Dar ul-Funun. He graduated from the University of Tehran, Faculty of Law, in 1950, and did his military service at the Military Academy.

In the early 1950s, Kasrai worked at the Iranian Health Co-operation Agency, created under Truman’s Point Four Program, and headed two of the agency’s periodicals (Behdashte Hamegani dar Nahiyeye Dariaye Khazar and Zendegi o Behdasht). From the mid-1950s to the early-1980s, Kasrai almost continuously served in government bodies focusing on housing or urban development: the Iranian Bank of Housing, the Housing Agency and the Ministry of Housing and Urbanization. In the early- to mid-1970s, in a forced leave from the Ministry, he worked for a few years as chief copywriter for the Behshahr Industrial Group. In addition to his regular employment, Kasrai occasionally taught literature at the Universities of Tehran and Zahedan.