Book Talk: Simorgh, Portraits on My Mind with Abbas Milani and Mahasti Afshar

May 22, 2025Simorgh: Portraits on My Mind (Mage Publishers, 2025), is one of Abbas Milani’s most self-reflective and engaging books. The two-part Persian original, Si-Chehreh, has been masterfully translated by Mahasti Afshar in a single volume. Titled Simorgh after the mythical bird that embodies humanity’s collective quest for the truth in Attar’s poetry, Milani explores the lives and passions, illusions, utopian aspirations, frailties, harrowing experiences of prison and exile, and the diasporic accomplishments of sixty Iranians who actively or inadvertently paved the way to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.Milani lived and worked in Iran until 1987 and was deeply embedded in the crosscurrents of the lives of the nationalist, Tudeh’i, Stalinist, Maoist, Islamist, and/or the politically unaffiliated individuals portrayed in what he calls nonfiction, historical short stories. They include some of Iran’s most renowned writers, politicians, scholars, artists, and activists as well as Milani’s friends and family who act as a backdrop against which the saga unfolds. Anyone who lived in Iran in the 1960s-1970s will likely recognize something of themselves in these personalities, or in Milani himself whose presence runs like a current through all the portraits.The conversation will be led jointly by Abbas Milani and Mahasti Afshar. They will share their stories, in English, about their collaboration, and read excerpts from both the original and the translation.Mahasti Afshar (Ziai) earned a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indo-European Folklore and Mythology at Harvard. She pursued a career as a nonprofit arts and culture executive, including at the Getty Conservation Institute and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She now devotes herself to translating and writing, most recently Lament for Siavash, which she presented at Stanford last spring, Simorgh: Portraits on My Mind, and Shiraz Arts Festival (in Persian).Abbas Milani is the Director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University, Adjunct Professor and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Milani has authored and translated numerous books in Persian and English and published more than 250 essays and book reviews in journals and papers. He is currently completing a book on Reza Shah.Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts