About Moniro Ravanipour

Short-story writer and novelist Moniru Ravanipur was born in the
village of Jofreh and raised in the provincial capital Shiraz. She completed
an undergraduate degree in psychology at Shiraz University.
Ravanipur’s first book was a collection of nine short stories called
Kanizu (1989, reprinted in 2001). In the winter of 1989, Ravanipur
published her first novel, Ahl-e Gharq (The people of Gharq). A year
later, she published a second novel, Del-e fulâd (The steel heart). In
1991 her second collection of short stories, Sang-e shaytân was published.

Moniro Ravanipour

This was translated into English and published in the United
States in 1996 as Satan’s Stones. Ravanipur’s novel Kowli kenâr-e âtesh
(The gypsy by the fire) was scheduled to go to press in 1991. In 1991–
92 she published a pair of children’s books, Sefid-e barfi, and Golpar,
mâh va rangin’kamân. These were followed in 1993 by her third short
story collection, Siriyâ, Siriyâ. Her next work didn’t appear until
1999, a novel called Kawli kenâr-e âtas. Her fourth collection of short
stories, Zan-e forudgâh-e Ferânkfort, was published in 2001.
Ravanipur’s productivity during the first twelve years of the
The Islamic Republic makes her a leading figure in the generation of fiction
writers who began publishing after the Iranian Revolution. Her
productivity likewise signals the mainstream presence, begun in the
The 1960s, of female narrators and voices in Iranian fiction. Simin
Daneshvar, Mahshid Amir-Shahi, Goli Taraqqi, Shahrnush Parsipur,
M. Shahrzad, Ghazaleh Alizadeh, Mihan Bahrami, and Farideh
Lasha’i were the chief women story writers from the 1960s, all of
them active in Iran or abroad in the 1980s, when Ravanipur began
adding her distinctive narrative voice to theirs.
Ravanipur’s success further signals mainstream acceptance of
regionalism in Iranian fiction. Sadeq Chubak, Ahmad Mahmud,
Mahmud Dowlatabadi and Amin Faqiri offered regional focus and
local color in fiction from the 1960s onward, while Ravanipur gives
her distinctive texture of Shiraz and Persian Gulf littoral life in her
narratives.