Simin Dāneshvar (Persian: سیمین دانشور) (28 April 1921 – 8 March 2012) was an Iranian academic, novelist, fiction writer and translator, largely regarded as the first major Iranian woman novelist. Daneshvar had a number of firsts to her credit. In 1948, her collection of Persian short stories was the first by an Iranian woman to be published. The first novel by an Iranian woman was her Savushun ("Mourners of Siyâvash", also known as A Persian Requiem, 1969), which went on to become a bestseller. Daneshvar's Playhouse, a collection of five stories and two autobiographical pieces, is the first volume of translated stories by an Iranian woman author.
