Read more
List of contents
Preface to Second Edition
Chapter 1. Hedayat and Modern Persian Literature
Chapter 2. Early Years
Chapter 3. Hedayat in Europe
Chapter 4. Life and Labour in the Golden Era
Chapter 5. Iranian Culture and Romantic Nationalism
Chapter 6. Iranian Culture and Critical Realism
Chapter 7. The Blind Owl: A Critical Exposition
Chapter 8. The Origins of The Blind Owl
Chapter 9. Hopes and Despairs
Chapter 10. Hajjis and Workers
Chapter 11. Satire and Depression
Chapter 12. The Trial: The Message of Hedayat
Chapter 13. The Execution: Hedayat's Suicide
Chapter 14. The Legend and the Man
Index
About the author
Homa Katouzian is the Roshan Cultural Institute Academic Visitor in Iranian Studies, St Antony’s College, and Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.
Summary
Sadeq Hedayat is the most famous and the most enigmatic Iranian writer of the 20th century. This book is the first comprehensive study of Hedayat's life and works set against the background of literary and political developments in a rapidly changing Iran over the first half of the 20th century. Katouzian discusses Hedayat's life and times and the literary and political circles with which he was associated. But he also emphasises the uniqueness and universality of his ideas that have both influenced and set Hedayat apart from other Iranian writers of the period and that have given him a mystique that has been instrumental in his posthumous success with acclaimed works such as The Blind Owl.
This second edition is fully revised and updated to reflect on recent debates and scholarship on Sadeq Hadeyat.
Foreword
This biography of one of Iran's foremost 20th-century writers examines Hedayat's work in its political context. It explores the nature of Hedayat's influence on Iranian society, and identifies what it is about his writing that accounts for the strength of this influence.
Additional text
'In this book Homa Katouzian walks the readers, both the experts on Iran and Persian literature and those who might not be familiar with that country and its culture, through the maze of Hedayat’s life and mind via his stories producing the most thorough, well researched, and reader friendly account of Sadeq Hedayat’s life and work.'
