Alefba is a Persian-language literary magazine with two periods of publication, one in Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 before the 1979 revolution and another thereafter in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Gholamhoseyn Sa’edi was the editor of both versions. In Iran the publisher was Amir Kabir Publishers, while in France the publisher was the Association of Iranian Writers in Exile.

Tehran

Several Iranian literary magazines such as Alefba emerged in 1960s and 1970s as a result of new authors and increased literary production in the country. In 1973, Amir Kabir Publishers invested 25,000 toman

Iranian toman

The toman , is a superunit of the official currency of Iran, the rial. Toman, derived from a Mongolian word meaning ten thousand , was the currency of Iran until 1932. It was divided into 10,000 dinar. Between 1798 and 1825, the toman was also subdivided into 8 rial, each of 1250 dinar...

 (about $3,500) in a new quarterly literary magazine, and selected Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi to be the editor. Aside from the editorial labor, Sa'edi was responsible for its choosing its title, as well as penning the calligraphy decorating the cover. Alefba quickly gained status as one of Iran's top literary journals and famous Iranian intellectuals, such as Simin Daneshvar

Simin Daneshvar

Simin Dāneshvar is an Iranian academic, novelist, fiction writer and translator of literary works from English, German, Italian and Russian into Persian. Daneshvar has a number of firsts to her credit. In 1948, her collection of Persian short stories was the first by an Iranian woman to be...

, had their works published in it. Nevertheless Sa'edi frequently selected works of previously unpublished writers or writers he knew personally to be published, and esteemed the political independence of the magazine, which featured writers with different worldviews. In 1974, Sa'edi was arrested by SAVAK

SAVAK

SAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah on the recommendation of the British Government and with the help of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency SAVAK (Persian: ساواک, short for سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور...

, the late shah's secret police. The sixth issue of Alefba (last issue in Tehran) was published in 1977.

Paris

After the revolution, in 1982, Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi fled to France. Within months of his exile, together with the Association of Iranian Writers in Exile, Sa'edi began to publish a new version of Alefba in Paris. He continued to edit the magazine until his untimely death in 1985. The final 1986 issue is a collection of Sa'edi's previously unpublished works. Sa'edi wrote that the goal of Alefba was "to keep alive the Iranian art and culture which the Islamic Republic oppresses." In addition to publishing works of numerous other Iranians in exile, Alefba was the sole literary venue in which Sa'edi published his own works in exile.