The Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat
The darkest Iranian novel ever written. Also the best.
you want to understand the Persian literary tradition through its most uncompromising voice
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Hedayat wrote this in 1936 and it was banned in Iran for decades. A man, a woman, an obsession, death, opium, a shadow that may or may not be real. Surrealist, hallucinatory, influenced by Kafka and Poe but utterly Iranian in its darkness. Hedayat died by suicide in Paris in 1951. The Blind Owl is the dispatch from inside a mind that saw something in Iranian culture and modernity that he couldn't resolve. Difficult and essential.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- Iran • Middle East
- Voice
- Written by a Iranian author
- Themes
- WitnessBorderlands
