“Berkeley Lecture Series” Presents:
A Talk by Kader Abdolah, a Prominent Iranian Writer, Visiting from Netherlands
Topic: “Iranian Literature in Exile”
Kader Abdolah, the pen name of Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami, is the great-great-grandson of Qhaem Megham Ferahani. From early age he was interested in literature and read western literature very widly. As a physics student in Tehran, he joined an underground left-wing political party that first rebelled against the Shah and later against the Islamic Republic. Besides writing for periodicals, he published two collections of stories under the pseudonym ‘Kader Abdolah’, the first names of two of his friends from the opposition who had been murdered. After being forced to flee Iran, he took up residence in the Netherlands in 1988. He studied Dutch at Utrecht University and in 1993 published De adelaars (The Eagles). In 2000, he published the autobiographical novel Spijkerschrift (translated into 13 languages, including in English by Susan Massotty as My Father’s Notebook). In 2006, he discussed the impact of Islamic fundamentalism on the daily life of a tradition-conscious family in his novel Het huis van de moskee (The House of the Mosque).
During the entire month of April 2010, Kader Abdolah will be Regents’ Professor at UC Berkeley’s Dutch Studies and Near Eastern Studies Program.
Date: Sunday, April 11, 2010
Time: 4:00 P.M.
Place: 110 Barrows Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Lecture in Persian