Blind Owl

Blind Owl, Sadeq Hedayat's masterpiece, tells the story of a young pen-case painter and his heartbreak. Isolated and alone, he mourns the loss of a mysterious love while descending into recollections and dreams frosted over by opium and alcohol, and imbued with the images he paints: an old man, a cypress tree, a beautiful woman, a waterlily. In stark, lyrical terms, the puzzle of the pen-case painter's grief is slowly unveiled ...

As inscrutable as it is universal, Blind Owl is the seminal work of Persian modernism, and one of the great novels of the twentieth century.

Reviews

“a much-needed and clear translation”
—Amir-Hussein Radjy, The New York Times

“The eerie, phantasmal Blind Owl…possesses the fully dimensional oddness of a vivid dream, which one can mine for interpretations, analyze for influences or simply submit to.”
—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal