Gevork Hovhannisyan-Khoudoyan

Gevork Hovhannisyan-Khoudoyan was born in 1907, in the Saramerik village of Salmast. He studied in Tiflis from 1915 to 1917, returned to Salmast, left to attend the French Lazarist school in Tabriz in 1919, and upon graduation, began a long teaching career. In 1936, he accepted an invitation to join the faculty of the Armenian School of Masjed Soleiman, a city in the southeast of Iran. While continuing to teach, he began writing under the pseudonym of Gevork Darfi. He wrote mainly plays, but also short stories, and poems. He was a member of the Armenian Writers’ Association of Iran and contributed to Armenian newspapers and monthly newsletters. Among his published plays are “Siavosh and Soudabeh”, “On the Road to Fairness”, “Greetings to You Milano”, and the award winning “Mesrob Mashtots”. His “Vahan and Razmdoukht”, “Ankavelin”(The Unforgivable), “Ariunod Tague” (The Bloody Crown), Louseres (Atoned), are unparalleled. Darfi also translated European and American literary works such as Shakespear’s Richard the Third, Malory’s Tristan and Ysolde, Frost’s The Paperboy of Lyons, O’Neill’s Anna Christie, Corneille’s Le Cid, and others.