Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (Persian: محمود دولت‌آبادی, romanized: Mahmud Dowlatâbâdi; born August 1, 1940 in Dowlatabad, Sabzevar) is an Iranian writer and actor, known for his promotion of social and artistic freedom in contemporary Iran and his realist depictions of rural life, drawn from personal experience.

In 2020, he wrote and recited a work called Soldier (Half-Burned boots) for the Art of Peace global project, composed and arranged by Mehran Alirezaei.

[1][2] Mahmoud Dowlatabadi was born into a family of shoemakers in Dowlatabad, a remote village in Sabzevar, the northwestern part of Khorasan Province, Iran.

Though his father had little formal education, he introduced Dowlatabadi to the Persian classical poets, Saadi Shirazi, Hafez, and Ferdowsi.

Nahid Mozaffari, who edited a PEN anthology of Iranian literature, said that Dowlatabadi "has an incredible memory of folklore, which probably came from his days as an actor or from his origins, as somebody who didn't have a formal education, who learned things by memorizing the local poetry and hearing the local stories.

He was an actor---and a shoemaker, barber, bicycle repairman, street barker, worker in cotton factory, and cinema ticket taker.

Towards the end of his incarceration, Dowlatabadi said "The story of Missing Soluch came to me all at once, and I wrote the entire work in my head."

The story is tremendously popular among Iranians due to "its detailed portrayal of political and social upheaval.

Since she didn't want the village to pity her, she would take a bit of lamb's fat and melt it and then toss a handful of dry grass or something into the pan and put this in the oven, so that with the smoke that would come out of the oven the neighbors might think that she was cooking a meat stew for her children that night," he told an interviewer.

The opera have Five acts and 12 Characters which are all accompanied by singers, actors, choirs, large orchestras, and video art on stage.

The original Persian title refers to the concept of 'besmel' explained in a footnote as: "the supplication required in Islam before the sacrifice of any animal".

He "examines the complexities and moral ambiguities of the experience of the poor and forgotten, mixing the brutality of that world with the lyricism of the Persian language," said Kamran Rastegar, a translator of Dowlatabadi's work.

He has also garnered praise internationally, with Kirkus Reviews calling The Colonel, "A demanding and richly composed book by a novelist who stands apart.

"[9] Safarnameh Sistan, a documentary which was made by Ali Zare Ghanat Nowi in 2011, about a trip to Sistan and meeting Balochi ethnics, illustrating the very hard life of people living there, giving information about their life style in such a dry area, is a free adaptation from Meet the Baloch People by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi.