It can, and has been analyzed, symbolism examined, but that seems less interesting to me having finished the book. The influence of writers like Jung, Rilke, Poe and most notably, Kafka is strong, but this absurdist tale seems to be driven by its own cluster of existential horrors. On the first page, Hedayat famously wrote: “The printing and sale in Iran is forbidden.” Although the setting of the story the Iranian city of Rey, and, briefly, in India has a classical atmosphere, there is a strong, idiosyncratic modernist feel. And then, as you start to unwind the experience, it takes on an eerie, impressive, surreal quality-no less dark-but unlikely to easily slip from the imagination once wedged there.Ī classic of twentieth century Iranian literature, The Blind Owl was composed during the latter years of the oppressive reign of Reza Shah and first published in 1936 in Bombay where the author, writer and intellectual Sadegh Hedayat was studying. After finishing the last page it sits heavy in the gut. Consumed with death, decay, sexual obsession and frustration. A hallucinogenic, opium-soaked account of a lonely pen case illustrator’s decent into madness, it is disorienting. The Blind Owl is a not an easy book to read.
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