The Book Beat reading group selection for November is The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, translated from the Farsi by D.P. Costello. This virtual Zoom meeting will be held Wednesday, November 30 at 7 pm. Books are available now and are discounted 15%. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to us with your name, phone number and email and we will add you to our virtual reading group list. Reminders and login links are sent on the morning or day of the meeting. Please try and login 10 minutes before the meeting so we can begin on time.
A haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation, The Blind Owl is a masterpiece of Persian literature—a tale of obsession and madness that chillingly re-creates the labyrinthine movements of a deranged mind.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. Read an excerpt of The Blind Owl here.
“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
Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) is the most famous and the most enigmatic Iranian writer of the 20th century. He was born in 1903 and he lived a troubled life which ended in 1951 with his suicide in Paris. His most celebrated novel, The Blind Owl has made an impact far beyond Iranian literary circles and has drawn the attention of Western critics.