About Akram
Akram Pedramnia is an Iranian-Canadian novelist, translator, researcher, and activist. She writes in both Persian and English.
Akram’s Biography
The author of five novels in Persian on themes that reveal underlying social issues based in Iran, Pedramnia has an academic background in English literature and a professional background as a medical doctor. Pedramnia is the translator of James Joyce’s Ulysses into the Persian language, whose first volume was published in the spring of 2019 and the second volume was released in the fall of 2020, the third volume was released in spring 2022, the fourth volume was published in spring 2024 and the fifth volume was published in spring 2026. The final volume (chapters 16, 17 and 18) is planed to be release in 2028.
Pedramnia has also translated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (2009) and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (2013), the latter was disseminated through the Iranian black market. She has translated various works by authors such as Colm Tóibín, E. L. Doctorow, Joan London, Richard B. Wright, Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein.
)Through the process of translating and disseminating uncensored seminal works, Pedramnia challenges a system of imposed censorship. Censorship of words, themes, and sometimes complete works is an inevitability for a Persian translator. In the case of Lolita, both the audiobook and the e-book have been made available for the Persian audience. Following their discovery of the underground dissemination of her uncensored translation, the Iranian Ministry of Cultural and Islamic Guidance declared the work an obscene publication, prohibited further sales, and ordered for its collection and confiscation. Despite this ban, circulation of the novel is still going strong, indicating the need for uncensored classic works by Iranian readers. The first volume of Pedramnia’s translation of Ulysses has followed a similar trajectory: it was translated without censorship, published abroad and is now being distributed “illegally”. To encourage accessibility to readers, Ulysses in Persian is being offered for free in ebook format. In the face of suppressive initiatives by the Iranian government, Pedramnia is continuing her search in more inventive ways to render sensitive materials into the Persian language without having to yield to censorship procedures.
Pedramnia also contributes to the literary theory and criticism publications and having authored and published essays on Translation. She has been a guest speaker (all in English) Literature Department of New York University in the academic years of 2019 and 2020 and a lecturer in University College Dublin at 2018 Summer School. Antwerp 2018, Mexico City 2019, Stanford 2021, Solothurn Literature Festival 2022 and Glasgow 2024. She has also been a guest speaker at several Farsi language events.
She is a member of the International James Joyce Foundation and PEN Canada.
Pedramnia is a recipient of the Friends of the 2019 Zurich James Joyce Foundation Scholarship and the 2020 Joyce Translation Scholarship and Looren Residency. Her 2019 translation of Ulysses received a Literature Ireland Translation Grant.
One of the strongest-willed translators active today. Confronting pernicious state-sponsored censorship, watching as dubious publishers eight time zones away put her work into print without permission or payment.
- Peter O’brien, The Globe and Mail
Her translations are distributed as pirated or over the Internet without her earning a cent – but that does not bother Akram Pedramnia. She is even pleased. Thanks to her, Iranian readers can read Lolita or Tender Is the Night
- Angela Schader, Neue Zürcher Zeitung