TEHRAN – American novelist John Fante’s 1938 book “Wait Until Spring, Bandini” has been published in Persian by Ofoq Publications in Tehran.

Mohammadreza Shekari is the translator of the book that is a powerful, lyrical and touching tale of a turbulent adolescent trying to break out of the suffocating, prison-like confinements of family, poverty and religion in a small town.

It tells the story of a winter in the childhood of Arturo Bandini, the oldest son of Italian immigrants living in Colorado during the Great Depression. With its powerful and evocative account of tragic love affairs, grinding poverty and adolescence in turmoil, this first novel from the Bandini quartet is a much-neglected masterpiece of modern American literature.

Belgian director Dominique Deruddere made a screen adaptation of the novel 1989. The film received the André Cavens Award for best film and won three Joseph Plateau Awards.

Fante’s early years were spent in relative poverty. The son of an Italian-born father, Nicola Fante, and an Italian-American mother, Mary Capolungo, Fante was educated in various Catholic schools in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, and briefly attended the University of Colorado.

In 1929, he dropped out of college and moved to Southern California to concentrate on his writing. He lived and worked in Wilmington, Long Beach, and in the Bunker Hill district of downtown Los Angeles, California.

He is known to be one of the first writers to portray the tough times faced by many writers in Los Angeles. His work and style have influenced such similar authors as “Poet Laureate of Skid Row” Charles Bukowski and influential beat generation writer Jack Kerouac. He was proclaimed by Time Out magazine as one of America’s “criminally neglected writers.”

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of John Fante’s novel “Wait Until Spring, Bandini”.

MMS/YAW