“Bor Shekan” writer Hamid Alidoosti dies week after winning Golden Pen

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- Writer Hamid Alidoosti Shahraki died of heart failure at Ayatollah Kashani Hospital in Shahrekord on Tuesday a week after winning the Golden Pen Award for “Bor Shekan”. He was 51.

“His death is great sadness for artists’ community in Chahar-Mahal and Bakhtiari, because Alidoosti was in his best writing phase as he won a prestigious national literary award last week,” the director of the Chahar-Mahal and Bakhtiari branch of the Art Bureau, Hojjatollah Shirvani, said in a press release on Tuesday.

Alidoosti Shahraki shared the Golden Pen Award in the Adult Story category with “Without Father’s Name” by Seyyed Meisam Musavian on July 5.

Published by Sureh-Mehr, “Bor Shekan” takes its title from an ancient tradition that existed in Iran’s Chahar-Mahal and Bakhtiari region during feudalism. Based on the Bor Shekan tradition, farmers agreed to reap the wheat and barley harvest on the same day in order to protect each other’s rights.

The Iranian Land Reform in the 1960s led to the fall of khans and Bor Shekan sank into oblivion in the wake of industrial farming that came following the reform.

The khans began to restore the tradition, distorting it with some superstitions in order to return to power.

“Today’s stories revolve around the stereotype of the romantic relationship, which has repeatedly been shown on TV and in cinema and has become boring for the audience,” Alidoosti Shahraki said after winning the Golden Pen Award.

“In ‘Bor Shekan’, I did my best to write a story that both has something new and tells about a modern issue, and talks about people’s pains,” he added.

The Iran Pen Association, which has been established by the Art Bureau of the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, organizes the Golden Pen Awards every year.

Alidoosti was also the author of “Dramatic Situations in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh” published by Sureh-Mehr in 2019. He wrote the book based on the Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, a descriptive list that was created by French writer Georges Polti to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance.

source: Tehran Times