TEHRAN – An audiobook of the Persian edition of Peter Ackroyd’s “Poe: A Life Cut Short” has been released by Avaye Chirok, a major Iranian institute that produces audiobooks.

Translated by Shahab Shokravi, the book has been narrated by Bahman Vakhshour, who has narrated several other audiobooks including Turkish writer Nazan Arisoy’s “Being Nazim in Piraye”.

The Persian translation of “Poe: A Life Cut Short” was published by Aftabkaran in 2020.

Edgar Allan Poe served as a soldier and began his literary career composing verses modeled on Byron; soon he was trying out his “prose-tales” - often horror melodramas such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”. 

As editor of the Literary Messenger, he was influential among critics and writers of the American South. His versatile writings - including, for example, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Raven” - continue to resonate down through the centuries.

Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days - no one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steamboat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern. 

This mystery sets the scene for a short life packed with drama and tragedy (drink and poverty) combined with extraordinary brilliance.

Poe has been acclaimed as the forerunner of modern fantasy, and credited with the invention of psychological dramas (long before Freud), science fiction (before H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) and the detective story (before Arthur Conan Doyle). 

Tennyson described him as “the most original genius that America has produced.” He influenced European romanticism and was the harbinger of both Symbolism and Surrealism. 

Peter Ackroyd, who places significance on Poe’s childhood (his traveling actor parents were miserably poor, his mother had TB and he was orphaned), claims that Poe found his family among writers - writers not only of his time but of the future generations who were influenced by the power of his imagination.

Photo: Cover of the audiobook of the Persian edition of Peter Ackroyd’s “Poe: A Life Cut Short”.

MMS/YAW