Arash Hejazi is a British-Iranian novelist, memoirist, translator and publisher whose life and work have been shaped by literature, censorship, exile and the struggle over who controls the stories a society tells about itself.
Born in Tehran in 1971, he trained as a doctor at the Iran University of Medical Sciences. His medical research examined the effect of storytelling on anxiety disorders in children, bringing together two concerns that would remain central to his life: the power of narrative and the vulnerability of the human mind.
Hejazi published his first novel, The Grief of the Moon, in 1994. Three years later, he co-founded Caravan Books, an independent publishing house in Tehran. As its Publisher, he published Iranian and international literature and helped introduce a generation of Persian readers to writers from across the world. He also edited the literary and cultural magazines Kamyaab and Book Fiesta. The latter was closed by the Iranian authorities in 2008 after publishing a short story by Primo Levi.
As a literary translator, Hejazi has translated works by writers including Milan Kundera, Kahlil Gibran, C. S. Lewis and Lord Dunsany. He became Paulo Coelho’s authorised Persian translator and publisher, translating many of Coelho’s major works and playing a central role in establishing his readership in Iran.
Hejazi’s second novel, The Princess of the Land of Eternity, became one of his most widely read works in Iran. It was followed in 2009 by Kay Khusro, a novel drawing on the legendary Persian king who ended a war inherited from earlier generations, surrendered his throne and vanished from the world. Hejazi later returned to the book in exile, extensively rewriting and reinterpreting it in English. The result is not a literal translation but the novel’s definitive English version, created for a different language and readership.
In June 2009, during the protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election, Hejazi witnessed the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan in a Tehran street and attempted to save her life. His account of her death contradicted the Iranian authorities’ narrative and was reported around the world. After speaking publicly about what he had witnessed, he could not return to Iran.
His memoir, The Gaze of the Gazelle: The Story of a Generation, traces his life from childhood after the Iranian Revolution to the events of 2009, placing one personal history within the experience of a generation shaped by revolution, war, censorship and disappointed hope. The book was published in English, German, Swedish and Italian.
After settling in Britain, Hejazi built a senior career in international publishing, working across books and journals at organisations including Nature Research, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and John Wiley & Sons. He holds an MA in Publishing from Oxford Brookes University and has written about censorship, freedom of expression and the international circulation of literature. He is now Managing Director of IWA Publishing.
Across fiction, memoir, translation and publishing, Hejazi’s work has remained grounded in the same conviction: stories are never merely inherited. They can preserve power and perpetuate old conflicts, but they can also be reclaimed, reimagined and used to break the hold of the past.
