Art of Translation Series: Sara Khalili

Sara Khalili is an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her translations include Moon Brow and Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, Kissing the Sword by Shahrnush Parsipur, and Rituals of Restlessness by Yaghoub Yadali.

She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Forough Farrokhzad, Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. Her short story translations have appeared in AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, EPOCH, GRANTA, Words Without Borders, The Literary Review, and PEN America, among others. Sara is a recipient of the PEN Translation Grant Award for her translation of a collection of short stories by Shahriar Mandanipour.

Moon Brow is both an Iranian novel and an example of the present global context that enables and, in Mandanipour’s case, forces literature to cross boundaries in language, theme, form, and style and offer a message beyond a singular national context or moment. Mandanipour, living in literary exile in the United States since 2006, seems to thrive on the idea of doubleness. Perhaps it is fueled by the predicament of a writer who has lived through one set of national contexts and stories and finds his oxygen for writing about those events outside his country in the strangeness of exile.