GHAZI RABIHAVI
Writer & playwright

A life in writing — English biography

01. Where the stories began.
A southern city, two languages, and a mother reading by lamplight.

Ghazi Rabihavi was born in Abadan, in southern Iran, in 1956. In his conversations about writing, the city’s palm groves, neighbourhoods, speech and remembered people return as the ground from which fictional lives begin. His recollections give the place an intimate scale before it becomes a landscape of revolution and war: the streets and voices known to a child.
Sources: [1], [13]

Speaking to Maryam Foumani in 2024, he described a childhood between languages. His paternal extended family spoke Arabic; Persian was the language of home with his mother. He remembered speaking Arabic as a child and said that, although that fluency had faded, he could still understand it. His account of an upbringing is heard through several voices.
Sources: [13]

His mother was an enthusiastic reader. He remembered her reading and telling stories on the roof by lamplight, including the adventures of Amir Arsalan, and writing letters for neighbours. Before the published books, there was this scene of one person carrying words to others: reading aloud, listening, and making a story part of everyday life.
Sources: [13]

The same conversation follows the family between two parts of Abadan. He remembers his father working as a carpenter on houses built for British oil-company staff before buying the palm grove. Later, the family moved into company housing with an older brother employed by the oil company. His account brings agricultural labour, industrial employment and the unequal geography of the city into the childhood story.
Sources: [13]

He traces an earlier generation of his father’s family from Syria to Shadegan, before refinery work brought that branch of the family to Abadan. He also says his parents separated when he was eleven. His subsequent life in company housing, with his brother and sister-in-law, remained within Abadan while changing the neighbourhood and circumstances of his childhood. These family details come from his own later account.
Sources: [13]

He also identifies a particular passage from family life into fiction. His father wanted to live in the palm grove as a landowner with local standing, and Rabihavi says that the father in Boys of Love draws partly on him. During adolescence he visited Arab-speaking villages with his sister-in-law, a teacher. The remembered father and those visits belong to his own account of the people and places that enlarged his understanding.
Sources: [13]

The household also heard the wider region through broadcasting. He remembers Persian radio before television, then programmes received from Basra, Baghdad and Kuwait. Speaking Arabic was another matter from reading and writing it: he says that, among the generation and neighbourhoods he knew, literacy in Arabic generally required formal study. His account gives language several settings, from family speech to school and the voices arriving from across the border.
Sources: [13]

02. A voice before a page.
Palm-grove tales and the beginnings of theatre.

Rabihavi recalls a period of childhood in his family’s palm grove and visits to nearby villages during adolescence. He remembers tales of a bird searching for its lost child at date-harvest time, fishermen carried away by a mermaid, and wedding songs about absent relatives. They describe an education through encounters and spoken traditions, alongside the books at home and his schooling in Abadan.
Sources: [13], [16]

Theatre also entered his life early. In the same interview, he remembered a school group of seven and joining Abadan television’s theatre group at sixteen, under Ali Sayyadi. He recalls that Sayyadi died on the first day Abadan was bombed. The memory connects an early artistic community with the later destruction of the city. Writing, acting and the shared work of a small company were already possibilities in his youth, decades before the London plays.
Sources: [13]

School exposed another difference between spoken language and public life. He recalls classmates arriving with Arabic as their home language and struggling with instruction in Persian. Even Arabic-speaking teachers, he says, had to teach in Persian. He also remembers Arab pupils excelling later. The account holds difficulty and achievement together, without reducing their schooling to a single experience.
Sources: [13]

His reading widened that formation. In a 2020 interview he distinguished lessons in technique from Hemingway and Faulkner, and an outlook shaped by Camus and Duras. Pinter’s plays helped open a way towards his own dramatic writing; he also spoke of reading Beckett. These are the influences he named, each contributing something different to his practice.
Sources: [19]

His opposition to heroic accounts of war began before the war in Iran. As a teenager he followed events in Vietnam, kept images of the Viet Cong in his room and read Oriana Fallaci’s reporting in Ferdowsi. He recalls avoiding Hollywood films that made war into a heroic spectacle. These are the political and artistic interests he remembers from youth, before his own experience of Abadan under siege.
Sources: [5]

Amir Payam’s BBC introduction to a 2011 filmed conversation reports an earlier refusal to take part in violence. During military service, Rabihavi was sent to Tehran to confront street unrest in 1357, or 1978–79; the report says he handed his weapon to fellow soldiers and fled, then returned to the Karun. This remains an attributed broadcaster account, without a military record or a full transcript of the interview.
Sources: [67]

03. Workers, children, a bookshop.
Writing close to the lives around him.

Editorial profiles identify An Incident at the Central Workshop as his first book: a collection of five stories about refinery workers. The industrial world of Abadan appears through working people. The University of Wisconsin Press biography describes a beginning in screenwriting, preserving another strand of the early career. Taken together, the accounts show a young writer working across several forms.
Sources: [16], [2]

In his 2024 interview, he recalled reporting on child labour with the photographer Manouchehr Deghati in 1358, the Iranian calendar year spanning 1979–80. He connected that work to Mordad, at the Foot of the Kilns of the South. The reporting and the story developed together. The recovered Yashar printing bears an autumn 1358 colophon, giving this remembered beginning a separate publication record.
Sources: [13], [16], [51]

His later account of the oil city distinguishes permanent company staff from labourers repeatedly taken on for ninety days. He remembers relatives and other villagers building lives through this insecure work, while the short contracts kept their wages and benefits below those of regular employees. These remembered employment patterns give further context to his attention to working people; they are his description of the Abadan he knew.
Sources: [13]

Sujet Verlag’s biography places his move from Abadan to Tehran at twenty-two, around the revolution. Rabihavi later recalled working in a Tehran bookshop before the war. Early fiction, journalism, bookshop work and cinema belong to this period of formation, with the boundaries between reading, earning a living and finding material for stories repeatedly crossing.
Sources: [17], [5], [16]

Speaking to Le Point in 2020, he described himself as a fine-arts student in Tehran during this period. In the same recollection, he returns to Abadan and remembers writing by a small lamp in a trench about the people around him. The interview names a course of study without identifying an institution, qualification or graduation date.
Sources: [18]

04. Back to a city under siege.
The witness and the difficulty of describing war.

When the Iran–Iraq war began, Rabihavi was in Tehran. In the Aasoo conversation published in 2023, he recalled returning to Abadan with friends, including the poet Ghaffar Hosseini. He described a dangerous route, a long walk and entry by water. He recalled preparing food, spending approximately three months under siege and eventually leaving by boat.
Sources: [5]

His early war writing grew out of that experience. The recovered Yashar printing of When the Smoke of War… is dated autumn 1359 in the Iranian calendar. Recollections of later publication and reprinting remain separate from that colophon. Memoirs of a Soldier bears a Qoqnus first-edition imprint of autumn 1360, consistent with his recollection of autumn 1981. Discussing it, he attends to a young soldier’s laughter and play as well as the surrounding violence.
Sources: [5], [14], [50], [52]

Palm Tree and Gunpowder also belongs to these early years. Its printed colophon names Damoon as publisher and records a first edition in summer 1359 in the Iranian calendar. The original contents page preserves five stories, from Makineh to Palto; their sequence and corresponding headings can be checked independently of the writer’s later recollections.
Sources: [40]

He resists the suggestion that an anti-war label was a programme chosen in advance. His account begins with what he saw and with the obligation to represent it truthfully. The need to prepare food under siege, and the soldier who remains a young person, give that position its human scale. Writing follows lives disrupted by war.
Sources: [5]

Those books also drew hostility. In the war interview he recalls Reza Rahgozar writing a response to When the Smoke of War Was Seen in the Sky and accusing him of misrepresenting events. Rabihavi places the dispute beside the civilian suffering he witnessed. This is his retrospective account of a critical response; the response itself has not been recovered and checked here.
Sources: [5]

Looking back in 2024, he also describes returning after the war. He remembers journeys through Abadan, Susangerd, Ahvaz and nearby villages, and finding places still devastated. His account follows displaced families who remained in cramped temporary accommodation elsewhere rather than recovering their earlier homes. He says the destruction of Abadan brought him to tears. The city’s later absence from his daily life belongs to that personal memory as well as to the unresolved departure chronology.
Sources: [13]

The border also cut across family connections. He recalls an Iraqi grandmother on one side and an Iranian grandmother on the other, and relatives whose marriages crossed the border. Those relationships complicated an account of war as two entirely separate peoples. Remembering displacement, he also describes ordinary people finding empty buildings, including athletes’ accommodation, to shelter families. His testimony gives the work of helping others a place beside destruction and flight.
Sources: [5]

05. The story and the accusation.
A writer remembers the circulation of a story and its consequences.

Rabihavi’s account of imprisonment is bound to the circulation of a story. In the Aasoo interview, he said that a political organisation reprinted The Corpse without his permission. He was subsequently accused of supporting it. He described leftist sympathies while insisting that he had belonged to no party or organisation. His explanation separates his writing from the use others made of it.
Sources: [5]

He recalled nine months of imprisonment, interrogation and torture before his release. An editorial profile likewise gives nine months; a Le Point account places that period in 1982–83. Other publisher biographies use different dates or a shorter duration. The available accounts preserve his description of the experience alongside an unresolved chronology.
Sources: [5], [16], [18], [1]

In his 2023 Zamaneh conversation, he returned to prison as part of a life in which writing continued despite pressure. That persistence later took several forms: stories in magazines, informal meetings with other writers, and manuscripts seeking permission to appear. His work after imprisonment continued to encompass relationships and ordinary lives, as well as the pressures surrounding them.
Sources: [15], [16]

06. Keeping a room for literature.
The association, the Thursday meetings, and stories in print.

Publisher and editorial biographies describe Rabihavi as an active member of the Iranian Writers’ Association. They also place him in the Thursday writing meetings with Houshang Golshiri after the association’s suppression. His French publisher records workshops with Golshiri. These accounts situate the developing work among fellow writers, readers and sustained discussion of fiction.
Sources: [17], [16], [10]

The meetings could require precautions. In the 2020 Le Point profile, he recalled participants arriving at intervals rather than entering together. The introduction to an earlier censorship interview names Eight Stories as one outcome, alongside Kanizu and Other Stories and The Third Landing, which it says were pulped before publication. These are reported collective projects, rather than three separately verified books by Rabihavi. The gatherings offered a place to read and discuss writing when maintaining a literary community involved practical risks.
Sources: [18], [14]

His stories also appeared in Adineh and Donya-ye Sokhan, according to the editorial profile and his later interview. Magazines offered another place for fiction while book publication was obstructed. The record of these years includes solitary writing and a public life of exchange: workshops, gatherings, periodicals and the effort to keep stories reaching readers.
Sources: [16], [15]

Another recollection widens the circle. Describing Reza Baraheni’s poetry and story workshop, Shams Aghajani names Rabihavi among writers invited to read at the first part of its monthly public meetings, followed by questions and answers. Aghajani lists workshop members separately: this account places Rabihavi among invited guests, rather than establishing that he was a student or a regular member. Baang republished the interview in March 2022; the individual invitation is undated.
Sources: [60]

Asked later about the prominence of an earlier literary generation, he considers the environment that sustained it: periodicals, criticism, cooperation among writers and a measure of public regard. He resists assuming that later writers must therefore have less talent. The reply places his own literary circles within a larger question about the opportunities a writing community can offer.
Sources: [63]

07. Words made visible.
Different responsibilities behind the moving image.

Cinema is a substantial strand of Rabihavi’s working life. The Soureh Cinema filmography distinguishes his roles: initial story treatments for Chrysanthemums and A Warm Day, writing on Hasrat-e Didar, Shadows of Sorrow and Beside the Ponds, and assistant directing on Beside the Ponds and Ey Iran. Six films carry seven role-specific credits.
Sources: [23]

The moving image also offered a smaller, more experimental form. In a 2020 interview, he recalled making several art videos with Kaveh Golestan in the early 1990s. He described Motherly as a text originally intended for theatre, adapted during pandemic restrictions with Eitan Jahan’s visual and editing work and Susan Farrokhnia’s voice. Collaboration carried the text into another medium.
Sources: [25]

Later credits show that screenwriting continued. The Beverly Hills Film Festival record for The Oak Tree lists a twenty-three-minute film dated 2018, from Lebanon and the United Kingdom: directed by Ethan Jahan and written by Rabihavi.
Sources: [24]

His work as a director also continued. An Italian announcement for Ceasefire described three episodes and advertised a national premiere at Lecce’s Museo Sigismondo Castromediano on 14 April 2022. It credits Rabihavi as director.
Sources: [41]

08. Between a manuscript and a reader.
The long practical history of getting a book into print.

In his censorship interview, Rabihavi recalled Gisu spending four years with the ministry before receiving permission in 1373, or 1994–95, for a run of one thousand copies. Publisher biographies describe a publishing ban following an Adineh article in 1994. In these accounts, the years spent writing were followed by another, uncertain period of waiting for permission.
Sources: [14], [17], [10]

He also described repeated refusals and alterations around From This Place, and years of waiting for Maryam. Accounts of From This Place concern different proposed collections and give differing dates. What recurs in his testimony is the distance between finishing a manuscript and being allowed to place it before readers, alongside the continued appearance of stories in periodicals.
Sources: [5], [14], [34]

The censorship conversation gives the waiting a further scale: he recalls spending six years seeking permission for three books, and his publisher failing to secure a second printing of From This Place. Friends continued reading their new stories aloud in one another’s homes, even when they held no expectation of publication. A manuscript could still have listeners while remaining absent from the bookshop.
Sources: [63]

The earlier interview also names Andisheh-ye Azad and Nameh-ye Kanun, publications of the Iranian Writers’ Association to which he says he contributed. He remembers a special issue responding to the attack on universities, followed by a war issue carrying his story In the Plain. His account locates the writing within particular publication spaces; it does not by itself establish a complete periodical bibliography or a national claim of literary priority.
Sources: [14]

Publishing abroad introduced other difficulties. In a 2018 interview he spoke about refusals, the economics of independent publishing and the importance of distribution. His account of Boys of Love includes an eventual publication by Gardoun after delays. Freedom from a state licence did not automatically provide a publisher, a viable print run or a route to an audience.
Sources: [34], [15]

Exile did not immediately undo the habits created by censorship. In the earlier conversation he describes having to recognise and shed restraints absorbed over many years. Discussing Shirin in 2016, he rejects the idea that censorship itself produces creativity and says he would not have conceived the work in the same way had he stayed. The ability to approach a subject is part of artistic freedom, alongside the permission to publish it.
Sources: [63], [26]

09. Leaving, without a clean break.
New places and the continuing presence of earlier ones.

Rabihavi left Iran for a later life centred on London in the 1990s. The precise departure year remains unresolved: Musicaos gives 1994, Sujet gives 1995 and a Swedish literature portal gives 1996. In the 2024 Aasoo interview, he places his final Abadan visit before emigration in the Iranian-calendar year 1376, or 1997–98. That later recollection adds a further chronological conflict. The accounts agree on the larger movement into exile while differing on its date.
Sources: [1], [17], [37], [16], [13]

In a 2020 profile he recalled an interrogation at Tehran airport before travelling to a censorship conference associated with Salman Rushdie, Harold Pinter and Doris Lessing. The episode is his recollection of leaving under scrutiny. Later production and publication records place his work in Britain and in a widening circle of countries, languages and collaborators.
Sources: [20], [21], [10], [12]

London became a place of writing, including Boys of Love, and of theatre. His account of belonging remains more complicated than a change of address. In the 2024 Aasoo interview, he described spending most of his time in London while also having a home in Italy. The remembered Abadan of his fiction continues alongside these later places.
Sources: [5], [13]

Literary exchange continued there. Introducing an interview with Mansour Koushan, Hossein Noushazar recalls first meeting him at a London roundtable on war in contemporary Iranian literature, held with Noushazar, Koushan, Rabihavi and Jamshid Barzegar. The memory locates Rabihavi within a shared discussion of war and writing. The interview’s August 2022 republication supplies no date for the earlier roundtable.
Sources: [61]

In memories attributed to Etemad and republished in September 2024, Rabihavi describes another part of his London life: going to the theatre with Ebrahim Golestan. They saw Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter; he recalls their final shared outing as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at a small theatre in Hackney. Ashraf Esfandiari, whom they called Ashi, helped arrange the visits. Rabihavi presents her care as central to Golestan’s later life.
Sources: [59]

Their friendship also carried the memory of Kaveh Golestan, Rabihavi’s earlier friend and film collaborator. He recalls planting an olive tree in Ebrahim’s yard in Kaveh’s name, and looking at it from the balcony while talking about Kaveh’s Abadan childhood and war photographs. The tree links friendship, the moving image and their remembered city; these are Rabihavi’s recollections, rather than a newly verified chronology of the Golestan family.
Sources: [59]

Theatre in exile also required practical sacrifice. In the Shirin interview he describes paying from his own pocket, training performers and relying on a small amateur collective. Susan Farrokhnia’s work sustaining the festival mattered to him. He acknowledges the smaller audience and uncertain income, yet says he would choose the ability to express his concerns again. His account of London contains the work of maintaining an artistic life as well as its freedoms.
Sources: [26]

10. A voice across the stage.
A playwright, and the companies that carry the work.

Look Europe! brought Rabihavi’s response to the imprisonment of the writer Faraj Sarkoohi to a London stage. Harold Pinter’s official archive records a reading at the Almeida Theatre on 5 October 1997, directed by Gari Jones. Pinter played the tramp, alongside a cast that included Roger Lloyd Pack, Nadim Sawalha and Anna Friel.
Sources: [21]

Stoning has a separate Amsterdam production record: the University of Amsterdam catalogue gives a premiere at Cosmic Theater on 17 January 1999, with Lucy Williamson translating and Rob de Kuiper directing. In San Francisco, Golden Thread presented Voices in ReOrient 2000 and Stoning in ReOrient 2001, both directed by Hal Gelb. The latter programme names its translation team.
Sources: [22], [9], [3], [4]

The Masculine Law follows women’s lives under discriminatory laws. An English episode appeared in exiled ink! in 2008, translated by Bita Mafizadeh. In March 2009, Silver Lining announced the play at TARA Studio. A contemporary notice dates that engagement to 2009, while its opening day differs from the company’s press PDF. Publication, translation and announced performance each leave a separate trace of the work.
Sources: [47], [48], [49]

The stage work also includes directing and performing. BBC coverage in 2015 records him directing a London reading of Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, in Ebrahim Golestan’s translation, and playing the Devil. Around Shirin in 2016, he spoke about training actors and financing theatre in exile: the practical work that accompanies a dramatic text.
Sources: [35], [26]

The repertoire also has a publication life. The German National Library records The Tragedy of a Monarchy as a Persian play in two acts, published by Goethe & Hafis in 2022. The catalogue gives the parallel German title Die Tragödie einer Monarchie alongside its Persian-language edition record.
Sources: [44]

A French reported conversation brings another dramatic name into view: Mon beau garçon. Marie Corcelle describes a mother whose son faces pressure to change sex because he is homosexual. The article does not identify an original title, edition or performance, or connect it with Motherly or The Masculine Law. Its reported subject extends the account of Rabihavi’s dramatic concerns while the work’s identity awaits further evidence.
Sources: [62]

11. Lives inside the longer form.
Displacement, intimacy and relations that resist easy answers.

Discussing Maryam, Rabihavi returned to the Tehran shelters for people displaced by war, including a place where his mother lived and which he knew closely. He described a novel contained within a day and shaped by a limited viewpoint. The characters’ circumstances come from remembered conditions, while the narrative leaves readers to work with what a person can and cannot know.
Sources: [5]

Boys of Love was written in London. In the 2023 Zamaneh interview he dates its composition to 2007 and describes the eventual Persian publication. A retained electronic edition bears a BaghDarBagh imprint, Sweden, April 2010; interview references to 2011 belong to a publication history still being reconciled by edition. The novel carries a relationship between men through the social changes preceding the war.
Sources: [15], [5], [39]

The later Daniel and His Father explores a difficult father–son relationship. Harvard records a Persian edition published in Bonn in 2022; the 2023 interview discusses its characters and questions. In that conversation Rabihavi also mentioned Report of a Dream as nearly finished. This is a glimpse of work in progress at the time of the interview.
Sources: [36], [15]

12. The concentration of a story.
A short form with many routes to its reader.

Short fiction runs through Rabihavi’s career, from the refinery-worker collection and early war writing to literary magazines and later publication abroad. His publisher biographies place the early stories in the 1980s; his own accounts return to children, displaced people and ordinary lives under pressure. The form belongs to the beginning of the work and continues alongside the novels and plays.
Sources: [16], [10], [5], [13]

In the 2024 conversation, A Ballad of Love returns him to a family memory: a grandmother from Basra whose marriage he connects with a settlement between families after a killing. He explains how that memory helped him write about a young woman sent into a marriage while loving someone else. A partner’s criticism of the narrow portrayal of women in Iranian fiction also influenced the work, he says. Family recollection becomes a starting point for fiction, rather than a claim that the story reproduces an entire life.
Sources: [13]

Two published English stories can be encountered at Iranian.com. Lady Rose appeared on 8 August 2005, followed by Fairy lights on 19 October. Both pages name Rabihavi as author without identifying an English translator. The publication dates place these short works in a different context from the later English novel, with their own routes to readers.
Sources: [7], [8]

The University of Wisconsin Press biography records a story in the 2005 PEN anthology of contemporary Iranian literature. The Library of Congress prepublication contents list pairs his name with White Rock in Strange Times, My Dear. The list identifies an anthology connection, with the library’s qualification that publisher-supplied prepublication data can differ from printed contents.
Sources: [2], [33]

Other translations widen that record. The published English The Prey in exiled ink! credits Nilou Mobasser as translator; Malu Halasa’s obituary also identifies her as translator of Look Europe! in 1997. In Swedish, Hålan appears in the 2020 anthology Tavlan, translated by Forogh Hashabeiky. These story publications and the obituary’s dramatic translation credit have their own contexts alongside the translated novels.
Sources: [42], [43], [64]

13. A book meets another language.
The translators and the editions belong in the story.

Christophe Balaÿ translated Boys of Love from Persian for Serge Safran’s French edition, Les Garçons de l’amour, published in 2020. The same publisher issued his translation of Le Sourire de Mariam in 2022. These were separate encounters with novels whose earlier writing and Persian publication histories stretch back much further than the translated edition dates.
Sources: [10], [11], [15]

Sujet Verlag’s catalogue records the first Söhne der Liebe edition in 2022, translated from Persian by Gorji Marzban and Thomas Geldner. DNB explicitly records a second edition in spring 2023, with the same ISBN. University of Wisconsin Press published Poupeh Missaghi’s English Boys of Love in 2024. These German and English editions name their translators and have publication histories separate from the original novel.
Sources: [12], [2], [45]

An Arabic collection appears in Ebjed’s publisher catalogue as Al-Nakhil wa-al-Barud, with a 2022 printing year and a translation credit to Hanaa Mah Tab. The title and name are rendered here in Latin transliteration. The record adds a named Arabic publication to the history of Palm Tree and Gunpowder, while leaving its particular Persian source edition and contents relationship unspecified.
Sources: [46]

Also in 2024, Musicaos Editore issued the Italian edition of Le quattro stagioni iraniane, edited and translated from English by Benedetta Pati, with distribution beginning on 10 May. Its language of translation is a distinct part of that record. Across these editions, the work travels through specific choices, collaborators and publishing contexts; each new edition belongs to a longer history.
Sources: [6]

The German translators’ work also belongs to a literary community. Sujet’s biographies describe Thomas Geldner and Gorji Marzban developing the Persian collection at Vienna’s main library together; Geldner’s account also names the event series Dem Wort die Freiheit. Their translation of Boys of Love enters this wider work of collecting books, bringing readers together and making Persian literature accessible in another language.
Sources: [65], [66]

14. The work in other hands.
Recognition, selection and the continuing life of a book.

Rabihavi recalls early recognition from Iran’s Children’s Book Council for his war-period writing. In the Aasoo interview he remembers a medal and a payment in 1359, the calendar year spanning 1980–81. He also recalled the circulation and reprinting of the early books. His account places a readership and literary recognition close to the beginning of his published work.
Sources: [5]

A later, documented selection concerns the French Boys of Love. Livres Hebdo lists Les Garçons de l’amour among the foreign novels in the first Médicis selection on 11 September 2020, and again in the second selection on 2 October. The two lists record the French edition’s passage through the prize selections; no Médicis prize win is claimed.
Sources: [27], [28]

Critical attention also returns to older work. In 2024, the University of British Columbia advertised a reading-club discussion of From This Place under the theme of anti-war literature, realism and idealism. The announcement shows a collection entering another conversation decades after its early publication history. Readers, translators and discussion groups give the writing further occasions to be considered.
Sources: [32]

Festival invitations also place the books in conversations with other writers. Serge Safran’s programme for Livres d’Ailleurs in Nancy, 7–9 April 2023, lists Rabihavi beside Hyam Yared and Fadi Zaghmout for a discussion of intimate and political lives, moderated by Kenza Sefrioui. It also lists him in a conversation about Iran and a multilingual recital. These advertised encounters belong to the French editions’ public life; the programme records invitations rather than documenting every session’s completion.
Sources: [56]

The retained September 2026 Exiled Writers Ink programme includes him in Escaping Voices, an evening of poetry, prose and conversation advertised for 15 September at The Sekforde in London. Tamanna Easar and Katy Belyani are named as hosts. The announcement places his work beside voices from Syria and Afghanistan, continuing the record of literary exchange in exile without making an unsupported claim about attendance.
Sources: [57]

He remembers the early books reaching children through teachers who travelled to Tehran, bought copies for their pupils and brought lists for individual signatures. This encounter with readers accompanies his recollection of reprintings and the Children’s Book Council. It gives recognition an ordinary setting: a teacher carrying books back to a classroom, as well as a medal or a published list.
Sources: [5]

15. Speaking beyond the book.
Public statements and a writer’s hopes for freedom.

Rabihavi’s name appears in collective statements about writers and public freedoms. A Radio Farda report in November 2015 names him among fifty-three signatories opposing attacks on writers and the punishment of colleagues. A January 2018 artists’ statement lists him among fifty-nine supporters of civil, social and economic demands and opponents of repression.
Sources: [29], [30]

An earlier statement, published by Tribune Zamaneh on 3 December 2013, lists him among supporters of the campaign for the gradual abolition of the death penalty in Iran. Its text opposes executions and calls for wider public support for abolition. The endorsement is preserved as a published name in a collective appeal, without assigning him an organisational role.
Sources: [53]

A December 2019 letter connects that public voice with theatre. Radio Farda names him among artists and writers asking Romeo Castellucci and Eugenio Barba to cancel their announced appearances at the Fajr festival after the November repression in Iran. The record establishes his inclusion among the letter’s signatories; it does not establish what the two invitees subsequently did.
Sources: [54]

In March 2020, a collective appeal published during the coronavirus crisis names him among hundreds of writers, artists and civil activists. The statement asks for political and ideological prisoners to receive leave and for summonses, interrogations and similar proceedings to stop during the emergency. Its published list records his support for the appeal at that time.
Sources: [58]

In October 2020, his name also appears among endorsements of a joint statement issued by the Iranian Writers’ Association in Exile and PEN Iran in Exile. The statement asks for the release of imprisoned writers, including Reza Khandan Mahabadi, Baktash Abtin and Keyvan Bajan. The published list places Rabihavi among supporters, separately from the organisations’ issuing boards; endorsement does not establish PEN office or authorship of the statement.
Sources: [55]

The public campaign to release imprisoned authors, created in December 2020, also includes his name in its collective statement. Together these records show recurring participation through listed endorsements, alongside his interviews on censorship and the difficulties of publishing. The public documents concern the conditions under which writers and other people can work, speak and live.
Sources: [31], [14], [34]

In interviews during 2022 and 2023, he discussed the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and linked his hopes for freedom to questions of poverty and social justice. These are his political views and expectations at that moment. Beside the novels and plays, the conversations preserve a writer speaking publicly about the conditions in which people live, read and make art.
Sources: [38], [15]

16. What the reader can discover.
Restraint, difficult characters, and room for uncertainty.

Rabihavi’s reflections on craft repeatedly return to restraint. He recalls Hemingway when explaining how a story can convey catastrophe without an accumulation of explicit description. In discussing Maryam, he stresses a character’s limited knowledge. The reader has to encounter that limit, consider what remains uncertain and make an interpretation, giving the story a life beyond its author’s intentions.
Sources: [5]

His 2023 Zamaneh interview also resists the expectation of reassuring or exemplary characters. He speaks of people who raise questions and of avoiding the imposition of his own personality on them. A fictional life can remain troubling, contradictory or difficult to judge. Knowing some of the remembered circumstances behind a story allows a further encounter with its imaginative choices.
Sources: [15], [13]

In the earlier censorship conversation, technique is described as serving the story. His interest includes the lives of ordinary people beyond the familiar figure of the artist. Across fiction, theatre and the moving image, these reflections point back towards the encounter that matters to him: a person in a story, and a reader willing to look closely.
Sources: [14]

He says he prefers a few curious readers to a large audience seeking a familiar formula, and welcomes younger Iranians finding work written before they were born. The starting question can be equally intimate: how might someone without a public voice tell their own story? In the Abadan conversation, loneliness and an imagined voice lead him towards working lives that usually remain outside public attention.
Sources: [15], [13]

SOURCES
[1] Ghazi Rabihavi · Musicaos Editore
Publisher biography. Its 1994 exile date and account of imprisonment differ from other sources; they are not treated as a settled chronology.
https://musicaos.org/ghazi-rabihavi/

[2] Boys of Love · BiblioVault
University of Wisconsin Press record: career biography, PEN anthology inclusion and the 2024 English edition translated by Poupeh Missaghi.
https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780299349042

[3] ReOrient 2001 · Golden Thread Productions
Company archive: Stoning, directed by Hal Gelb. Festival run: 27 September–14 October 2001.
https://goldenthread.org/productions/reorient-2001/

[4] ReOrient 2001 · programme
Production programme, printed pages 3 and 5: Stoning translation credited to Ana Bayat, Hal Gelb and Lucy Williamson. PDF.
https://ucarecdn.com/5d8f89c5-2a7c-43fa-a933-0209296a1076/

[5] Literature and war · Aasoo
Maryam Foumani interview, published 28 July 2023 after a conversation in summer 2022. Author recollections, including the siege, imprisonment and publication delays; paraphrased in English.
https://www.aasoo.org/fa/articles/4458

[6] Le quattro stagioni iraniane · Musicaos Editore
Italian edition edited and translated from English by Benedetta Pati; distribution recorded from 10 May 2024.
https://musicaos.org/le-quattro-stagioni-iraniane-ghazi-rabihavi-narrativa-42/

[7] Fairy lights · Iranian.com
English story credited to Rabihavi, 19 October 2005. No English translator is identified on the published page.
https://iranian.com/Arts/2005/October/Lights/

[8] Lady Rose · Iranian.com
English story credited to Rabihavi, 8 August 2005. No English translator is identified on the published page.
https://iranian.com/Arts/2005/August/Rose/index.html

[9] ReOrient 2000 · Golden Thread Productions
Company archive: Voices by Rabihavi, directed by Hal Gelb. Its synopsis centres on an answering machine and loneliness.
https://goldenthread.org/productions/reorient-2000/

[10] Les Garçons de l’amour · Serge Safran éditeur
French edition, 20 August 2020, translated from Persian by Christophe Balaÿ. Publisher biography records workshops, cinema, a 1994 publishing ban and departure in 1995.
https://www.sergesafranediteur.fr/les-garcons-de-lamour-ghazi-rabihavi/

[11] Le Sourire de Mariam · Serge Safran éditeur
French edition, 19 August 2022, translated from Persian by Christophe Balaÿ.
https://www.sergesafranediteur.fr/le-sourire-de-mariam-ghazi-rabihavi-2/

[12] Söhne der Liebe · Sujet Verlag catalogue
English-language catalogue, printed pages 8–9: German first edition, 2022; translation from Persian by Gorji Marzban and Thomas Geldner. The separately cited DNB MARC record explicitly labels the spring 2023 appearance a second edition. PDF.
https://sujetverlag.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Iranische-Bibliothek_Englisch.pdf

[13] Childhood, language and remembered lives · Aasoo
Maryam Foumani interview, 10 December 2024. Author testimony about Abadan, his mother’s storytelling, school theatre and life between London and Italy.
https://www.aasoo.org/fa/articles/5013

[14] Censorship and self-censorship · Zamaneh
Page dated 15 February 2011. Author replies on early books, Gisu and narrative technique. A later republication gives a different original date; the introductory chronology also contains an apparent error.
https://www.radiozamaneh.com/31210/

[15] Writing, characters and later novels · Zamaneh
Esfandiar Kusheh interview, 13 February 2023. Distinguish the editorial biography from the author’s testimony about Boys of Love, Daniel and His Father, publishing and political hopes.
https://www.radiozamaneh.com/753294/

[16] A writer of a rare generation · Baang
Editorial profile, 10 December 2023: early refinery-worker fiction, reporting, periodicals and literary meetings. Its departure date, 1375, differs from other accounts.
https://baangnews.net/13787

[17] Biographie · Sujet Verlag
Publisher account of the move to Tehran, Iranian Writers’ Association, Thursday meetings, cinema and London. Departure dated 1995; repeated URL variants are one source.
https://sujetverlag.de/bio-ghazi-rabihavi/

[18] The novel and a forbidden love · Le Point
Valérie Marin La Meslée, 8 October 2020. Reporting and author testimony; the prison account places nine months in 1982–83. Retained original capture.
https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/ghazi-rabihavi-et-le-tabou-de-l-homosexualite-en-iran-08-10-2020-2395498_3.php

[19] A writer’s influences · Culture Papier
Interview, 2 November 2020: Hemingway, Faulkner, Camus, Duras, Pinter and Beckett. Repeated page variants do not provide independent confirmation.
https://culturepapier.org/un-ecrivain-peut-faire-bouger-les-choses-pour-le-romancier-ghazi-rabihavi-selectionne-pour-le-prix-medicis-etranger/

[20] Leaving Iran · Heidi.news
Profile/interview, 23 October 2020. The author recalls an airport interrogation before a censorship conference; the article dates departure to 1995.
https://www.heidi.news/culture/l-ecrivain-qui-raconte-les-homosexuels-broyes-par-le-regime-iranien

[21] Look Europe! · Harold Pinter’s official archive
Retrospective stage record: Almeida Theatre reading, 5 October 1997, directed by Gari Jones; Harold Pinter played the tramp. Original retained via a 2004 archive capture.
https://www.haroldpinter.org/acting/acting_forstage2.shtml

[22] Stoning · University of Amsterdam theatre collection
Production catalogue: premiere on 17 January 1999 at Cosmic Theater, Amsterdam; author Rabihavi, translator Lucy Williamson, director Rob de Kuiper.
https://pid.uba.uva.nl/ark:88238/b3cb9afbc9f2434ff0b77b7ffb691a3a67

[23] Cinema credits · Soureh Cinema
Filmography separates assistant directing, screenwriting and initial story treatments. Original-language credits were checked in the retained capture.
http://www.sourehcinema.com/People/People.aspx?Id=138201090100

[24] The Oak Tree · Beverly Hills Film Festival
Festival credit: 2018, 23 minutes, Lebanon/United Kingdom; directed by Ethan Jahan and written by Ghazi Rabihavi.
https://beverlyhillsfilmfestival.com/film/the-oak-tree/

[25] Motherly and the moving image · Kayhan London
Interview, 3 May 2020: theatrical text adapted during pandemic restrictions, with Eitan Jahan and Susan Farrokhnia; earlier video work with Kaveh Golestan is the author’s recollection.
https://kayhan.london/1399/02/14/194659/

[26] Shirin and theatre in exile · IranWire
Interview, 9 September 2016, around the advertised London festival production. Statements about actor training, costs and artistic aims are attributed to Rabihavi.
https://iranwire.com/fa/blogs/18358/

[27] Médicis 2020 · first selections
Livres Hebdo, 11 September 2020: Les Garçons de l’amour in the foreign-novel selection. Selection, not a prize win.
https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/les-premieres-selections-du-medicis-2020

[28] Médicis 2020 · second selections
Livres Hebdo, 2 October 2020: the novel remains in the second foreign-novel selection. This is not a final prize result.
https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/les-deuxiemes-selections-du-medicis-2020

[29] Writers’ collective statement · Radio Farda
18 November 2015: report names Rabihavi among 53 signatories opposing attacks on writers and punishment of colleagues.
https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f12-statement-of-53-iranian-writers/27373677.html

[30] Artists’ collective statement · Tribune Zamaneh
4 January 2018: public statement lists him among 59 artists. It is user-published material, not the broadcaster’s editorial position.
https://www.tribunezamaneh.com/archives/142303

[31] Release the imprisoned authors · public campaign
Campaign created 11 December 2020; the published collective statement lists his name. It establishes a listed endorsement, not organisational office or authorship.
https://www.change.org/Release-the-imprisoned-authors

[32] Anti-war literature: realism vs. idealism · UBC
Institutional announcement for a 30 November 2024 reading-club discussion of From This Place. Evidence of the announced discussion, not an award or a claim of attendance.
https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/anti-war-literature-realism-vs-idealism/

[33] White Rock · Library of Congress contents record
Publisher-supplied prepublication contents list pairs Rabihavi with White Rock in Strange Times, My Dear. The library warns that this data can differ from printed contents.
https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip052/2004023527.html

[34] Independent publishing · Journalism Is Not a Crime
Mohammad Tangestani interview, 2 February 2018: publication refusals, distribution and film roles. Personal experience is distinguished from the feature’s introductory claims.
https://www.journalismisnotacrime.com/fa/features/2193/

[35] Don Juan in Hell · BBC Persian
Mohammad Abdi, 15 September 2015: Rabihavi directed the London reading and played the Devil; the work is by Bernard Shaw, in Ebrahim Golestan’s translation.
https://www.bbc.com/persian/arts/2015/09/150915_l51_don_juan_shaw_golestan

[36] Daniel and His Father · Harvard Library
Catalogue record for the Persian Goethe & Hafis edition, Bonn, 2022, ISBN 9783949715211. A German parallel title is not evidence of a German translation.
https://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/99156693870203941/catalog

[37] Qazi Rabihavi · Världslitteratur.se
Swedish literature portal biography dates emigration to 1996, illustrating the unresolved disagreement between biographical accounts.
https://varldslitteratur.se/person/qazi-rabihavi

[38] The protests and the writer · Le Point
Interview, 13 November 2022. Political interpretations and hopes are the author’s views, not findings asserted by this website.
https://www.lepoint.fr/livres/ghazi-rabihavi-en-iran-c-est-une-nation-qui-se-bat-13-11-2022-2497600_37.php

[39] Boys of Love · 2010 electronic imprint
Retained Persian PDF, title/credits page: BaghDarBagh, Sweden, first electronic edition April 2010. The original resource is linked without its transient access token; live availability is unconfirmed. No literary text is reproduced here.
https://00318236294445506323.googlegroups.com/attach/9775792456bfc135/BoysOfLove%20-Ghazi-Rabihavi-2010.pdf?part=0.2

[40] Palm Tree and Gunpowder · original imprint and contents
Retained Persian scan: Damoon, first edition summer 1359, PDF page 3. The five-entry contents page and each corresponding story heading were visually checked, on printed pages 5, 43, 50, 59 and 71. This is an imprint and index inspection, rather than a complete literary reading. Original PDF mirror.
http://dl.karaketab.com/nakhlo.barot.pdf

[41] Ceasefire · Lecce announcement
Leccenews24 announced an Italian premiere on 14 April 2022 at Museo Sigismondo Castromediano, crediting Rabihavi as director. An announcement is not proof the screening took place.
https://www.leccenews24.it/cultura-spettacoli/ceasefire-cessate-il-fuoco-film-ghazi-rabihavi.htm

[42] The Prey · exiled ink!
Published English story credits Nilou Mobasser as translator. The retained em3/em4 captures require issue/date reconciliation; only the translation credit is used here. PDF.
http://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/magazines/em4.pdf

[43] Hålan in Tavlan · Uppsala University
Institutional anthology PDF: title/imprint identifies Uppsala, 2020; the Hålan contribution credits Rabihavi and translator Forogh Hashabeiky. Anthology and contribution are distinct records; no literary text is reproduced here.
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1350645/FULLTEXT03.pdf

[44] Persian editions and parallel titles · German National Library
Captured DNB records identify Die Tragödie einer Monarchie as a Persian play in two acts, Goethe & Hafis, 2022. German parallel titles do not establish German translations. Söhne der Liebe is separately catalogued as German, dated 2023.
https://services.dnb.de/sru/dnb?version=1.1&operation=searchRetrieve&query=WOE%3DRabihavi%20Ghazi&recordSchema=oai_dc&maximumRecords=60

[45] Söhne der Liebe · DNB second-edition record
Exact MARC record 1265699038 explicitly states second edition, Bremen, Sujet Verlag, spring 2023, ISBN 9783962021016. German translation from Persian by Gorji Marzban and Thomas Geldner. The edition statement distinguishes it from the 2022 first edition; textual revision is not established.
https://services.dnb.de/sru/dnb?version=1.1&operation=searchRetrieve&query=idn%3D1265699038&recordSchema=MARC21-xml&maximumRecords=1

[46] Al-Nakhil wa-al-Barud · Ebjed
Publisher record and cover identify an Arabic story collection by Rabihavi, translated by Hanaa Mah Tab, printing year 2022, ISBN 9789922676272. Title and translator name are given in Latin transliteration. The publisher does not identify a particular Persian source edition.
https://ebjed.com/en/single.php?view=945

[47] The Masculine Law · exiled ink! issue 10
Autumn–Winter 2008, printed page 16: an English episode translated by Bita Mafizadeh, alongside an account of the 4 August reading. PDF.
http://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/magazines/em10.pdf

[48] The Masculine Law · contemporary announcement
WhatsOnStage, 20 March 2009: Silver Lining at TARA Studio, advertised for 24–28 March. The company press PDF instead begins the announced run on 23 March; the completed performances are not established by these announcements.
https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/off-west-end-announcements-20-mar-2009_17508/

[49] The Masculine Law · company press announcement
Silver Lining Theatre Company’s PDF announces TARA Arts performances on 23–28 March, without printing a year. The separately dated contemporary announcement supplies 2009 while retaining the different opening day.
https://theatrealive.org/images/pdfs/ta_themasculinelawpress.pdf

[50] Memoirs of a Soldier · Qoqnus imprint
The original scan’s page 3 identifies Qoqnus and a first edition in autumn 1360 (Iranian calendar). The later library upload is not the publication date.
https://www.iifma.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Khaterat-Yek-Sarbaz.pdf

[51] Mordad at the Southern Kilns · Yashar imprint
The original scan’s page 3 names Yashar and autumn 1358 (Iranian calendar). No edition number or precise literary subtype is inferred.
https://www.iifma.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Mordad-Paye-Kurehaye-Jonub.pdf

[52] When the Smoke of War · Yashar imprint
The original scan’s page 3 names Yashar and autumn 1359 (Iranian calendar). This printing evidence does not settle the dates of every subsequent reprint.
https://www.iifma.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dude-Jang.pdf

[53] Against the death penalty · collective statement
Tribune Zamaneh, 3 December 2013. The original signatory list names Rabihavi; its internal Persian and Gregorian datelines disagree. A listed endorsement does not establish campaign leadership.
https://www.tribunezamaneh.com/archives/37706

[54] A letter about the Fajr festival · Radio Farda
Report published 23 December 2019 names Rabihavi among artists and writers asking Romeo Castellucci and Eugenio Barba to cancel their announced festival appearances. The report does not establish the response or subsequent attendance.
https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f4_iranian_artists_writers_ask_italian_artists_cancel_programe_theater/30340525.html

[55] Writers in prison · October 2020 statement
Kayhan London, 21 October 2020, reproduces the joint statement dated 20 October from the Iranian Writers’ Association in Exile and PEN Iran in Exile. Rabihavi appears in the endorsement list, separately from the issuing boards.
https://kayhan.london/1399/07/30/216446/

[56] Livres d’Ailleurs 2023 · publisher programme
Serge Safran’s invitation lists Rabihavi for Nancy’s 7–9 April 2023 festival, including the 8 April discussion of intimate and political lives and 9 April sessions. Programme listings are distinct from evidence of completed participation.
https://www.sergesafranediteur.fr/evenements/ghazi-rabihavi-ecrivain-iranien-auteur-de-le-sourire-de-mariam-a-livres-dailleurs-a-nancy/

[57] Escaping Voices · Exiled Writers Ink
The retained September 2026 programme advertises Rabihavi for 15 September, 7 pm, at The Sekforde in London, hosted by Tamanna Easar and Katy Belyani. This monthly page changes; its older website creation date is not the event date, and the announcement is not an attendance record.
https://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/exiled-cafe/

[58] Prisoners during the pandemic · collective appeal
Tribune Zamaneh’s HRANA republication, 25 March 2020, names Rabihavi as signatory 260 in a collective appeal for political and ideological prisoners to receive leave during the coronavirus crisis. This supports a listed endorsement, not authorship or a current health claim.
https://www.tribunezamaneh.com/archives/224190

[59] London theatre and the Golestan family · remembered friendship
KhabarOnline, 4 September 2024, republishes Rabihavi’s recollections attributed to Etemad; Aftab carries the same account the following day. Shared theatre visits, Ashraf Esfandiari and the olive planted for Kaveh are his testimony, not separate interviews or a verified family chronology.
https://www.khabaronline.ir/news/1953452/%D8%A2%D8%AE%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%86-%D9%87%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%87%DB%8C%D9%85-%DA%AF%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%86-%DA%A9%D9%87-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%AF

[60] Shams Aghajani · Reza Baraheni’s workshop
Interview response republished by Baang on 28 March 2022. Aghajani names Rabihavi among invited guest readers at the monthly public meetings, separately from his list of workshop members. The republication date does not date the invitation.
https://baangnews.net/6082

[61] Hossein Noushazar · a recollection of Mansour Koushan
Interview and opening recollection republished by Baang on 8 August 2022. Noushazar recalls meeting Koushan at a London roundtable on war in contemporary Iranian literature, alongside Rabihavi and Jamshid Barzegar. No date is given for that meeting.
https://baangnews.net/8144

[62] Marie Corcelle · love and dramatic representation
French reported conversation in Fild. The reporter names Mon beau garçon and describes a mother and son. Page date: 31 December 2020; separate rights line: 20 November 2020. No original script, edition or production date is established.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220516181954/https://fildmedia.com/article/les-garcons-de-l-amour-ou-l-homosexualite-au-pays-des-mollahs

[63] Hossein Noushazar · censorship and self-censorship
Baang republication, 3 October 2023, of an earlier interview. The introduction gives 19 March 2010 as the original appearance; the retained Zamaneh page is dated 15 February 2011. Author replies recall three manuscripts, six years of seeking permission, an unsuccessful second printing and private story readings.
https://baangnews.net/16170

[64] Malu Halasa · Nilou Mobasser’s translating life
Retained obituary republication. Halasa identifies Mobasser as translator of Look Europe! in 1997 and remembers her participation in a Southbank Centre freedom-of-expression discussion with Rabihavi and other writers.
http://drsoroush.com/en/nilou-mobasser-obituary/

[65] Thomas Geldner · Sujet Verlag
Publisher biography: Vienna library work, the Persian collection and the event series Dem Wort die Freiheit. His work with Gorji Marzban is credited separately from Rabihavi’s biography.
https://sujetverlag.de/bio-thomas-geldner/

[66] Gorji Marzban · Sujet Verlag
Publisher biography identifies him as a co-founder of the Persian collection at Vienna’s main library, among his literary and civic activities. Translator context rather than a role attributed to Rabihavi.
https://sujetverlag.de/bio-gorji-marzban/

[67] Anti-war language and peace · BBC Persian
Amir Payam’s broadcaster introduction to a filmed conversation, visibly updated 30 January 2011. Its military-service account and reported anti-Vietnam-war participation are not a full transcript or independently recovered service documentation.
https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2011/01/110122_l07_war_peace_ghazi

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