TEHRAN –Over 5,000 Noruz travelers paid visits to the house museums of contemporary Iranian literary figures in Tehran during the New Year (Noruz) holidays, which ended on April 2, an official with Tehran Municipality has said.

A total of 5,700 people toured the house of the late poet Mehdi Akhavan-Saless as well as the home of literary couple Jalal Al-e-Ahmad and Simin Daneshvar, Vahid-Reza Anaraki explained on Saturday.

The figure shows a 42 percent growth year on year, the official added.

In 2021, Tehran Municipality announced that a “cultural passage” was to be set up to connect the house of the late poet Nima Yushij to the one that once was the home of literary couple Jalal Al-e-Ahmad and Simin Daneshvar.

Earlier that year, the fully renovated house of Yushij, who is famed as the father of modern Persian poetry, was officially unveiled by the municipality’s Beautification Organization.

In 2019, Tehran Municipality purchased the house, which is situated in northern Tehran near the house of the famed Iranian couple Al-e-Ahmad and Daneshvar, who were novelists and short-story writers.

Al-e Ahmad translated works by French writers André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus into Persian. In 2008, Iran established the Jalal Al-e Ahmad Literary Awards in memory of the writer, who passed away in 1969.

Mehdi Akhavan-Saless wrote over twenty books, including “Arghanun” and “Winter.”He was well acquainted with Persian classical poetry. However, he focused on free-verse poetry.

Akhavan-Saless taught Persian literature at the University of Tehran and several other academic centers and was sentenced to several years in prison and exile for his political activities during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The poet was buried in Tus beside the tomb of Ferdowsi, the poet who wrote the Persian epic masterpiece, the Shahnameh.

Literary tourism is a type of cultural tourism and occurs when authors or their literature become so popular that people are drawn to either those locations associated with the author such as their birthplace, home, graveside, or those featured within their writings.

ABU/AM