Najaf Daryabandari Information

Najaf Daryabandari (Persian: نجف دریابندری; 23 August 1929 – 4 May 2020) was an Iranian writer and translator of works from English into Persian.

Najaf was the son of Captain Khalaf Daryabandari, one of the first marine pilots of Iran. The Iranian Merchant Mariners’ Syndicate held a commemoration ceremony for Najaf Daryabandari and awarded him a replica of Darius the Great’s Suez Inscriptions. He started translation at the age of 17–18 with the book of William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily“. He and his wife Fahimeh Rastkar, were also the authors of “The Rt. Honorable Cookbook, from Soup to Nuts” [literally in Persian “From Garlic to Onion”], a two-volume tome on Iranian cuisine that have collected the diverse dishes of the country.^[5] He worked as a senior editor at the Tehran branch of Franklin Book Programs.

Other translations by Najaf Daryabandari include ‘The Prophet and the Madman’ by Gibran Khalil Gibran, ‘Ragtime’ and ‘Billy Bathgate’ by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, ‘A Rose for Emily’ and ‘As I Lay Dying,’ by William Faulkner and ‘A History of Western Philosophy’ by Bertrand Russell.

Daryabandari received the Thornton Wilder Prize from Columbia University for translating American literary works.

In 2017, Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) named Daryabandari as a “Living Human Treasure.”

After losing his wife and suffering from brain strokes, Daryabandari stopped working. He was a sociable man and many Iranian writers and poets were among his friends.

He never attended university and was a self-taught teacher.

Daryabandari once said that translation is not a science; it is an action to be learned through regular or irregular practice – through trial and error.

Najaf Daryabandari died on May 4, 2020, in Tehran at the age of 90 after a long illness.