Alireza Beheshti Shirazi

Seyyed Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, born on 20 Azar 1339, is an Iranian writer, translator, publisher, and journalist. In the early years after the Revolution, he worked for the newspaper Jomhouri-e Eslami, and during the premiership of Mir-Hossein Mousavi he served for a time as secretary to the Council of Ministers. Cultural activity and publishing subsequently became more important to him, and he founded Roozaneh Publishing, an institution that has published numerous works in the humanities, literature, and thought. Political activity has also been part of his life, but a significant part of his cultural record has been devoted to translating, publishing, and introducing intellectual works.

One clear strand of Beheshti Shirazi’s work is the translation of books on society, political institutions, freedom, and development. He contributed to the translation of the Encyclopedia of Party Politics and, together with Jafar Kheirkhahan, translated Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s The Narrow Corridor into Persian. His name also appears as the proofreader of the Persian translation against the original text of Why Nations Fail. Together, these activities demonstrate his attention to institutions, democracy, and the relationship between state and society in the works he has translated.

Another part of his intellectual and translational work concerns individual ethics, spirituality, and ways of living. Beheshti Shirazi translated Henry David Thoreau’s Walden into Persian and has said in an interview about the work that reading it transformed both his life and his view of the world around him. In that interview, he emphasized aspects of Thoreau’s thought such as simple living, life close to nature, the critique of exploitation, and the connection between reform of the individual and reform of society. His translation of Walden was published by Roozaneh Publishing.

Beheshti Shirazi is also the author of Heavenly Tables, a collection of his writings from 1368 to 1376, published with paintings by Mir-Hossein Mousavi. These writings show a more personal and spiritual aspect of his work; the publisher has described them as a reflection of the author’s inner reflections and experiences in the years after the war. His record thus displays, at once, an interest in political and social thought, economics and institutions, and an attention to spirituality, ethics, and the philosophy of life.

At certain periods, Beheshti Shirazi has also been active in political and journalistic work and has spent periods in prison following political events in Iran. Nevertheless, his role as a translator and publisher who has made a number of influential texts in social thought and the philosophy of life available in Persian has an independent and noteworthy standing.