Shusha

About

Shushā (Shamsi) Guppy born Shamsi Assār (December 24, 1935, Tehran, Iran - March 21, 2008, London, United Kingdom), was a writer, editor, actress and - under the name of "Shusha" - a singer of Persian and Western folk-songs. (Her first album produced when she was a student in France in the late 1950s was under the name Chucha Assar). She had lived in London since the early 1960s. She was also a talented amateur documentary filmmaker who was even nominated for an Oscar (a First for an Iranian) back in 1976 for her feature documentary People of the Wind co-directed with Anthony Howarth which was narrated by British Hollywood Star James Mason. Her books were reminiscent of the very first generation of Iranian expatriates to study and live outside Iran and who redefined and enriched their Persian heritage within a cosmopolitan identity both by necessity and choice. She married the writer and explorer Nicholas Guppy in 1961 and were divorced in 1976.