Shusha Guppy

Shushā Guppy گوپی‎, née Shamsi Assār , was a writer, editor and - under the name of "Shusha" - a singer of Persian and Western folk-songs. She had lived in London since the mid 1960s. Her father, Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad-Kāzem Assār , was a distinguished Shia theologian and Professor of Philosophy at University of Tehran. She was sent to Paris when she was only seventeen to study Oriental languages and philosophy. She also trained as an opera singer. In Paris she encountered artists, writers and poets such as Louis Aragon, Jose... Bergamin, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. She was encouraged by Jacques Prévert to record albums of Persian folk songs, and subsequently chansons and old French songs. After marrying the writer and explorer Nicholas Guppy in 1961 she moved to London, where she became as fluent in English as she already was in Persian and French. She wrote articles for major publications in both Britain and America.
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