Sadeq Hedayat His Work and his Wondrous World [Paperback]

Featuring contributions from leading scholars of Iranian studies and / or comparative literature, this edited comprehensive and critical edited collection provides detailed scholarly analysis of Hedayat's life and work using a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches.

Hedayat is the author ofThe Blind Owl, the most famous Persian novel both in Iran and in Europe and America. Many of his short stories are in a critical realist style and are regarded as among some of the best written in twentieth century Iran. But his most original contribution was the use of modernist, more often surrealist, techniques in Persian fiction. Thus, he was not only a great writer, but also the founder of modernism in Persian fiction.

Yet both Hedayats life and his death came to symbolize much more than leading writers would normally claim. He still towers over modern Persian fiction and will remain a highly controversial figure so long as the clash of the modern and the traditional, the Persian and the European, and the religious and the secular, has not led to a synthesis and a consensus.

1. Introduction: The Wondrous World of Sadeq Hedayat Homa Katouzian  2. Sadeq Hedayats Centenary: Report of Events in Tehran, and Personal Recollections Jahangir Hedayat  3. Sadeq Hedayat and the Classics: The Case of the Blind Owl Marta Simidchieva  4. The Blind Owl: Present in the Past or the Story of a Dream Houra Yavari  5. Influence as Debt: The Blind Owl in the Literary Marketplace Michael Beard  6. The Blind Owl and the Sound and the Fury Bharam Meghdadi  7. Women in Hedayats Fiction Homa Katouzian  8. Satire in HajjiAqa Firouzeh Khazrai  9. Narrative Identity in thelC$