TEHRAN – Iranian poet Sanaz Moheb has rendered a selection of poems by American novelist and poet Paul Auster into Persian.

The poetry has been selected from Auster’s book “Collected Poems” and published by Sib-e Sorkh Publications in Tehran.

The book is a compelling anthology of poetry, translations and composition notes by the author featuring selections from “Spokes”, “Wall Writing”, “Disappearances”, “Effigies”, “White Spaces” and other works, along with biographical details and the author’s own thoughts on his writing.

Auster’s complex novels, several of which are mysteries, are often concerned with the search for identity and personal meaning.

After graduating from Columbia University (M.A., 1970), Auster moved to France, where he began translating the works of French writers and publishing his own work in American journals. 

He gained renown for a series of experimental detective stories published collectively in 1987. It comprises “City of Glass” (1985), about a crime novelist who becomes entangled in a mystery that causes him to assume various identities; “Ghosts” (1986), about a private eye known as Blue who is investigating a man named Black for a client named White; and “The Locked Room” (1986), the story of an author who, while researching the life of a missing writer for a biography, gradually assumes the identity of that writer.

Other books that feature protagonists who are obsessed with chronicling someone else’s life are the novels “Moon Palace” (1989) and “Leviathan” (1992). “The Invention of Solitude” (1982) is both a memoir about the death of his father and a meditation on the act of writing. 

Auster also penned several verse volumes including “Unearth” (1974) and “Wall Writing “(1976) as well as the essay collections “White Spaces” (1980) and “The Art of Hunger” (1982).

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of Paul Auster’s “Collected Poems” by Sanaz Moheb. 

RM/MMS/YAW