If JD Salinger could see what was on the shelves in Iranian bookshops, he would turn in his grave. The Inverted Forest, a 1947 novella that he refused to republish in the US for more than half a century, is widely available in Farsi in most Iranian bookshops, for just 90,000 rials, or £2.20. (English-reading Salinger diehards hunting on AbeBooks only have the option of a $500 secondhand copy of the Cosmopolitan issue where it originally appeared).

The Inverted Forest’s publication in Farsi is just one example of Iran’s messy, complicated, yet fascinating translation scene, which has long been undermined by the country’s failure to join the Berne convention on copyright. Iranian authors who publish in their home country are offered some protection under national law, but the work of writers who publish outside Iran is completely unprotected. According to the Tehran Times, one Iranian translator has secured the copyright to produce a version in Farsi of Paula Hawkins’s 2017 novel, Into the Water. But at least five others are already working on competing translations.

Thanks to Iran’s love for literature, Tehran bookshops boast a diverse range of foreign titles, spanning everything from Marcel Proust to Haruki Murakami. Even works rarely seen in UK bookshops, such as Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, are abundant in Iran – and widely read. That said, censorship is rife: the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance vets all books before publication, and most are redacted – although under the current moderate administration, there is increasing leeway.



Translators in Iran enjoy a degree of popularity rarely seen in the west; their names are published on covers alongside the authors’, and some are famous cultural figures. But for most, translation is a passion career, with little to no financial reward and months spent waiting to obtain permission.

The popularity of foreign fiction and the difficulties of obtaining permission have exacerbated the problem of multiple translations of the same book popping up, with some translators exploiting the copyright vacuum – particularly so for bestsellers. Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed, for instance, has been translated into Persian by at least 16 different people. Recently, Arsalan Fasihi, who has translated Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, warned that the issue could trigger a “downfall of Persian literature” because it was affecting the quality of translations.

Tehran-based author Hossein Sanapour was one of more than 100 writers who signed a letter to Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani demanding, while endorsing him in the election, that Iran join the Berne convention. “Even before the revolution, some of our literary giants were opposed to joining copyright,” Sanapour says. “It’s only in recent years that we are realising the damage we’ve endured as the result of not having joined earlier.”

Sanapour said that some publishers did start voluntarily adhering to copyright: “At one point, it looked as if a wave of publishers were going towards respecting copyright but the numbers didn’t grow … Around five or six publishers started it but then it hit stagnation.”

He is very critical of publishing without permission, which he likened to stealing. However, he does not blame translators. “The problem is that the necessary legislation is not there,” he says.

Mahshid Mirmoezzi, who has translated more than 40 German books into Farsi, has started to obtain copyright before publishing. Her recent books, including Night Train to Lisbon by Swiss writer Pascal Mercier, have all been published with permission.

“Day by day, the number of translators and people caring about copyright is increasing,” she says. “But the issue of copyright has plagued Iran’s literary and translation scene. It has led to readers losing their trust.”



Authors, too. While some, such as Paul Auster, have begun accepting a nominal fee from Iranian translators, others, such as Mario Vargas Llosa, objected. In 2008, Nobel laureate JM Coetzee asked me to pass on a statement to the Iranian news agencies, one that reflected his belief that copyright protection was not just about money. “It does upset writers, justifiably, when their books are taken over without permission, translated by amateurs and sold without their knowledge,” he wrote.

But even if translators such as Mirmoezzi go to the trouble of getting the copyright, a different publisher can still ask an amateur to translate the book without it – and precedent says they will. “It’s not like … you’d be able to prevent other translations,” she says. But like many, Mirmoezzi accepts this little Iranian quirk as a matter of course. “[It’s] not a nightmare,” she says, “but the reality of our life.”