page_title: Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh
section_title: Living abroad
hierarchical_section_title: Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh / Biography / Living abroad
caption_attribution_description: Kaveh Persian magazine, No. 9, 2nd year, Sept. 1921, Berlin.
context_page_description: Mohammad-Ali Jamālzādeh Esfahani was one of the most prominent writers of Iran in the 20th century, best known for his unique style of humour. In view of his vast influence over Persian short story writing, he is often referred to as the father of this genre in Iran.
context_section_description: The young Jamalzadeh lived in Iran only until he was twelve or thirteen. Thereafter, he lived in Lebanon, where he attended the Aintoura Catholic School (1908) near Beirut, in France (1910), and in Switzerland where he studied law at University of Lausanne and later at University of Burgundy in Dijon, France.
  After his father's death, Jamalzadeh's life took a turn for the worse, but thanks to many supporting friends and to occasional paid teaching jobs, he survived starvation. By the time of World War I, still in his early age, he joined a group of Iranian nationalists in Berlin and, in 1915, founded a newspaper (Rastakhiz) for this group in Baghdad. After remaining in Baghdad, Jamalzadeh went to Constantinople where he witnessed the Armenian Genocide and encountered many corpses during his journey. He wrote of his experiences and eyewitness accounts decades later in two books entitled "Qatl-e Amm-e Armanian" (Armenian massacres) and "Qatl o ḡārat-e Arāmaneh dar Torkiya" (On the massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey) which were published in 1972 and 1963 respectively. During this time he also worked for the periodical Kāveh (1916). In 1917, he published his first book Ganj-e Shayegan (The Worthy Treasure). An overview of Iran of the start of the 20th century, Ganj-e Shayegan deals with Iran's socio-political and economic problems, a major contribution which bridges the gap between literature and science. In the same year he represented the Nationalists at the World Congress of Socialists in Stockholm. His later years, until 1931 when he settled in Geneva and worked thereafter for the International Labour Organization, were spent in temporary employments, such as one at the Iranian embassy in Berlin.
  During all these years, Jamalzadeh had very little contact with Iran. But that did not bar him from learning Persian on his own. Drawing on his scant experiences gained at a young age, he wrote about the lives of contemporary Iranians. His preoccupation with the use of language and his Dickensian style of writing, including repetitions, piling up of adjectives, and using popular phrases, quickly remind the reader of Jamalzadeh's background and of his sincere intentions. However, his physical distance from the scenes of the events described in his stories somewhat compromises the accuracy of his works.
caption: Kāveh (کاوه), No. 9, 4 September 1921, Berlin
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