About The Book

Sadegh Hedayat was Iran’s most renowned modern fiction writer, and his spine-tingling novel The Blind Owl is considered his seminal work. A classic of modern Iranian literature, this edition is presented to contemporary audiences with a new introduction by Porochista Khakpour, one of the most exciting voices from a new generation of Iranian-American authors.

A haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation, The Blind Owl tells the story of a young opium addict’s despair after losing a mysterious lover. Through a series of intricately woven events that revolve around the same set of mental images—an old man with a spine-chilling laugh, four cadaverous black horses with rasping coughs, a hidden urn of poisoned wine—the narrator is compelled to record his obsession with a beautiful woman even as it drives him further into frenzy and madness.

Praise

“An extraordinary work.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“[Hedayat] conveys more vividly than Kafka or Poe the state of madness. . . . [The Blind Owl is] a terrifying whorl of incidents that turns and twists upon itself to recreate the labyrinthine movements of an insane mind.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“If you ever happen to go mad it will no doubt unfold precisely the way it is described here in The Blind Owl. It will be haunting, harrowing, and not without humor. Sadegh Hedayat, through the eyes of his young Iranian opium addict, has provided a penetrating and unflinching look into all of us. We owe him a debt of gratitude for this work of art.” —Said Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood

Excerpt

1

There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker.

It is impossible to convey a just idea of the agony which this disease can inflict. In general, people are apt to relegate such inconceivable sufferings to the category of the incredible. Any mention of them in conversation or in writing is considered in the light of current beliefs, the individual’s personal beliefs in particular, and tends to provoke a smile of incredulity and derision. The reason for this incomprehension is that mankind has not yet discovered a cure for this disease. Relief from it is to be found only in the oblivion brought about by wine and in the artificial sleep induced by opium and similar narcotics. Alas, the effects of such medicines are only temporary. After a certain point, instead of alleviating the pain, they only intensify it.