The Blind Owl (Authorized by The Sadegh Hedayat Foundation - First Translation into English Based on the Bombay Edition)

By Sadegh Hedayat

Widely regarded as Sadegh Hedayat's masterpiece, the Blind Owl is the most important work of literature to come out of Iran in the past century. On the surface this work seems to be a tale of doomed love, but with the turning of each page basic facts become obscure and the reader soon realizes this book is much more than a love story. Although the Blind Owl has been compared to the works of the Kafka, Rilke and Poe, this work defies categorization. Lescot's French translation made the Blind Owl world-famous, while D.P. Costello's English translation made it largely accessible. Sadly, this work has yet to find its way into the English pantheon of Classics. This 75th anniversary edition, translated by award-winning writer Naveed Noori and published in conjunction with the Hedayat Foundation, aims to change this and is notable for a number of firsts: *The only translation endorsed by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation *The first translation to use the definitive Bombay edition (Hedayat's handwritten text) *The only available English translation by a native Persian and English speaker *The preface includes a detailed textual analysis of the Blind Owl Finally, by largely preserving the spirit as well as the structure of Hedayat's writing, this edition brings the English reader into the world of the Hedayat's Blind Owl as never before. Extensive footnotes (explaining Persian words, phrases, and customs ignored in previous translations) provide deeper understanding of this work for both the causal reader and the serious student of literature.

“….There are indeed marked differences between Costello’s and Noori’s translations. As Noori indicates, his attempt to preserve the overabundance of dashes gives the reader a more immediate sense of the narrator’s agitation...The first sentence flows on in Noori’s translation, piling sensation upon sensation never allowing us to pause and catch our breath or separate out the images from the sensations. In his discussion of the relationship between his translation and Costello’s, Noori also draws on translation theory and sees Costello’s focus on the fluidity of the text in English as a “domestication” of Hedayat’s original. Noori’s new English translation and his preface are a welcome addition and will no doubt draw the attention of scholars interested in Hedayat’s works. The close textual and comparative analysis of the type Noori offers marks a new and long-overdue critical approach to the translation of the most celebrated work of modern Persian prose.” -Professor Nasrin Rahimieh in Middle Eastern Literatures

• Language: English
• Publisher: l'Aleph
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9789186131487

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Reviews for The Blind Owl (Authorized by The Sadegh Hedayat Foundation - First Translation into English Based on the Bombay Edition)

[varielle_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was enthralling though I didn’t understand a darn thing. Is this a hallucination of a man on drugs? Is this a picture of increasing madness culminating in murder? Is the wife an innocent party married to a paranoid lunatic? Did nothing at all actually happen? The Blind Owl is a catastrophe you can’t look away from.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A real life horror story of a man addicted to opium and wine who writes to his shadow and veersaround illusory reality with ugly, repetitive and boring images of a butcher, a snake trial, and murder, dismemberment, suffering, and death.The Owl seemed to understand his writings.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 1981-04-20)“I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams.”In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh Hedayat“My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself.”In “The Blind Owl” by Sadegh HedayatUnforgettable is "The Blind Owl", the masterpiece of Sadegh Hedayat, who with this novel inaugurated modern Persian literature. The reader is seduced into entering the dangerous terrain of psychic disintegration, experiencing in the company of the protagonist a vicarious nightmare of hallucinations where the boundaries between reality and dreams dissolve and we are left lost in a labyrinth of terror, to struggle in vain against the sinister apparitions emanating from the shadows beyond the reach of rationality. The reading experience is akin to the existential panic suffered during sleep paralysis when the ego feels overwhelmed by the threat of extinction by an unseen presence. Oh the horror! Reading this tale while stoned enhances the fear and mystery, but can be recommended only to those possessing steady nerves. “I finally learned that I must remain silent as much as possible. I must always keep my thoughts to myself.” Heinlein couldn’t have said it better himself…

[askelmore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an extremely important work of Iranian fiction, written in the 1930s. It was chosen by someone in one of the book clubs I participate in. According to the introduction, it is so shocking that there are rumors that it led to people dying by suicide.

The book tells two versions of the same story – both told from the main character’s perspective. He is an artist who is either solitary or lives with his wife (depending on the telling). One version is a bit more supernatural-feeling than the other, both heavily feature sadness, loneliness, and darkness.

I missed something in this book. I didn’t get it, and that is why I didn’t give it a ranking. I feel like it’s just not something I can wrap my head around, because I can’t wrap my head around the book. It obviously is full of symbolism that I don’t get because I don’t have the shared culture that might be necessary to truly pick up on the nuance of the storytelling. I’m not even entirely clear on the purpose of the book. Perhaps is an allegory of death? I don’t know.

The author’s style keeps me from really getting into the book – the writing is fine, but it’s also a translation to English, so it comes across as fairly plain and also repetitive. There is (according to Wikipedia, which I visited immediately upon completion) a reason for this, and an art to it, but again I think a whole lot has been lost in translation.

Mostly reading this book made me angry that I a) can’t read all the languages and b) don’t understand or even have a basic understanding of the vast majority of cultures in the world.

So yay for that?

[lunarreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

a very special novel, dark, gloomy, depressing. The author, not the most joyful person it seems, uses opium but the reader only needs his writing to reach a trance. Don't kill yourself after reading this, seems to be the recommendation to give.

[meredy_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'd like to say that this is the novel that Jackson Pollack would have written if his medium had been words instead of paint, but I don't think it is.Reading The Blind Owl was like having a feverish hallucination, a nightmare too real to be a dream. It was like swallowing tea steeped in the bones of E. A. Poe, or gulping a liqueur distilled from the carapace of Gregor Samsa. It was like smoking a painting by Bosch, wallowing in the base line of "O Fortuna," fleeing the monster in the labyrinth only to circle back and embrace it--and discover that it is you.

[the_hibernator · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this surreal novella, an unnamed protagonist unburdens the deadly weight on his chest by confessing to his own grotesquely owl-shaped shadow on the wall. "in order to explain my life to my stooping shadow, I am obliged to tell a story. Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!"In his mind-spinning narration, it is difficult to tell when the events described are cloaked with opium, veiled with madness, or are simple truth. This novel is deeply disturbing in many ways. It narrates horrific events, certainly, but it is the manner that they are conveyed that is frightening. His imagery is surreal. His repetition is hypnotic. His words are oppressive. "Only death does not lie. The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life."The imagery and symbolism used by Hedayat portrays his personal marriage between Western and Eastern culture. Although this book is considered the essence of Persian literature, there are signs of Poe and Kafka. The Blind Owl bled, vomited, and wept Freudian symbolism. This was an amazing book, and highly recommended to people interested in Persian fiction or in modernist fiction.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Enter, if you dare, into the landscape of madness, the delirium of opium, the fever dream of a genius. This novella is exquisitely painful to read, and I would not have missed the experience for anything. The author, Iranian born Sadegh Hedayat, who committed suicide upon finishing this novel, offers this oh so generous and passionately painful glimpse into the existential madness of his mind. Determined to know himself fully, the narrator shares a nightmare compilation of childhood and adult fantasies, passions, and despair. To top the experience off of reading this masterpiece, the introduction is magnificent in and of itself. Not for the fainthearted, this mesmerizing work of art!

[wassilissa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Speziell der Kurzroman "Die blinde Eule" am Anfang des Buches hat etwas sehr Fantastisches und erinnert mich in Sprache und Handlung an Edgar Alan Poe oder sogar H. P. Lovecraft. Aber das Buch spielt im Iran, und so haben die gruseligen und surrealen Elemente eine sehr orientalische Prägung. Ein ungewöhnliches Lesevergnügen.Das Buch ist 1936 erschienen, wirkt aber heute noch kraftvoll.Im Buch finden sich weitere Kurzgeschichten sowie ein Biografie und eine Bibliografie.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This novella is about a young man quite fond of wine and opium, who sees a beautiful but mysterious woman through a ventilation hole in his closet. He goes back to the closet three days later to look for her, but there is no such aperture there. He is in despair over "losing" her, but several weeks later she shows up outside of his front door. He invites her in, and she lies on his bed. He touches her, and realizes she is dead. From there on, the story is more morbid and surreal, and he eventually descends into madness.If you like Edgar Allan Poe, you'll probably like this novella. If not, I wouldn't recommend it.

[danielle23_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have to admit to not completely understanding this book although I was very impressed with the narrative and the beautiful language used.

[diefledermaus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Blind Owl is a gorgeously written opium nightmare. The plot is circular and surreal and much of this slim book is taken up by the narrator’s claustrophobic musings on death and decay. Although it is divided into two parts - a present and a past - everything feels timeless and like something half-remembered out of a dream. The narrator overtly sets out to tell th story as one that is unbelievable and painful. He lives alone and paints pen cases for a living - always the same picture of an old man, a beautiful girl and a stream. One day, while retrieving something from a closet, he sees this picture come to life through a hole in the wall. But he can’t find the man or the girl outside and even the hole in his closet has disappeared. The narrator is tormented and frantically searches for this image - until one day the girl turns up at his doorstep. His story devolves into one of death, possession, and guilt and ends in a highly symbolic journey.In the second half the narrator has jumped in time but still the same elements appear - the girl, the old man laughing, the same buildings and places and situations. Here, the narrator is an invalid with a scornful, unfaithful wife. But he’s still isolated, alienated and fixated on death. Events occur in a dreamlike and fateful manner. Claustrophobic, repetitive and nightmarish but undeniably well-written.

[beelzebubba_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps my hopes had been raised too high: from reading some recommendations from one who supposedly is an expert on such literature, claiming this was the most depressing book ever written. And then I heard that some editions even warned the reader in an introductory section, of the dangers of reading this book causing thoughts of suicide.Either my sensitivity wasn't of a depth necessary to appreciate the moroseness of this work, or I'm just one sick puppy who needs much more in the way of insanity, depravity and doom to move me. After finishing it, I was left wondering, “That's it?” Oh well, looks like I'll live to see another day.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Is this the story of a mentally ill man? Or a description of his opium-fueled dreams? It is not clear--he certainly loves his opium, but whether he is mentally ill, physically ill (coughing blood, or is this from the opium smoking?), or high is unclear.Too violent for me (even if it is all dreams). His wife is "the bitch" (and also his first cousin), which is tiring to read over and over. Creepy, like a bad dream.

[eadieb-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Book Description The story is narrated by a young man, a painter of miniatures, whose name is never given. He feels an overbearing need to recount an experience he went through that has shattered his whole existence. A beautiful woman, an old man and a cypress tree are the recurring motifs.

My Review Known as the modern Persian Classic, this book is a nightmare from the beginning to the end and is not for the emotional unstable. It is a hallucinogenic trip triggered by opium use and a serious mental condition of the narrator. It was banned in Iran because it had been known to make its readers suicidal. The author committed suicide at age 48 by gassing himself to death. My 4 star rating is not because I enjoyed the book but because of the experience evoked while reading this book. It is filled with metaphor, symbolism and very beautiful prose. The author wanted the book to be the experience and not a book about an experience. It is just that - a book that takes you to the narrator's decomposed soul and the darkness of his heart. If you like the works of Edgar Allen Poe then I would recommend this book for you. 

[missizicks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had read various things about this book that left me with a feeling of trepidation about reading it. It apparently has a reputation for encouraging suicide. Some consider its portrayal of women to be misogynistic. It deals with madness, drug addiction and murder in violent terms.I wasn't expecting to enjoy it, but I did. It reminded me of the passages in Crime and Punishment where we experience Raskolnikov's delirium. The repetition and nightmarish quality also made me think of Kafka.The narrator is unreliable. From the start he tells us that he is an opium addict and an alcoholic. The story he tells is disjointed, jumbled, part hallucination, and it's never clear whether any of it is true, because we never hear from anyone else. He's talking to his shadow which makes the shape of an owl on the wall.As a testimony of someone who is severely mentally ill, it is compelling. The narrator is imprisoned inside his own mind, and in the story he tells this is represented by the room in which he is quarantined during an illness that seems to start when his adoptive mother dies. From the experience of viewing her body all his paranoia stems.He believes his wife to be unfaithful, but I'm not convinced he really has a wife. He refers to her as a whore because he believes she forced him to have intercourse with her alongside her dead mother's body. He is obsessed with the butcher's shop across the street, and tells us that he killed his wife having witnessed the butcher slaughtering sheep. He relates a family history that is part ancient myth, explaining that he doesn't know who his father is. His hallucinations recur around the vision of a young girl he believes to be his wife but also his mother, dancing for a peddler that he believes is his father and uncle and his wife's father and a beggar in the street.The narration reads to me like mania, the ravings of someone who believes the things their corrupted mind is telling them about the people around them. The narrator's conviction that his wife is unfaithful made sense to me, in relation to his mental illness. I didn't think it was misogyny. For that to be true, the narrator would have to clearly state that all women were whores. His delusion only makes him believe that of his wife. He is not coherent in his narration. His mind is a jumble tipped out onto the page. His delusion is what dictates his violent actions, including what we see as the rape and murder of his wife, but that he only sees as her accidental killing in a moment he doesn't fully remember happening.Perhaps the translation I read is different to the one most often discussed online. I read the 75th anniversary edition translated by Naveed Noori and authorised by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation. The claim of the translator is that his is most true to meaning, based as it is on the earliest known manuscript and not on later, possibly corrupt, editions. He claims to have retained the sense of frenzy from the original, whereas other translators have favoured narrative flow and inadvertently made the narrator seem a more reasonable man. I might seek out the Costello translation from 1957 for comparison.I have no idea whether Hedayat intended the book to be an allegory for Persia/Iran under Reza Shah. I have no cultural reference points to recognise any allusions Hedayat made in the text (although the footnotes helped at times). I have no idea whether Hedayat himself was mentally ill. I read the book purely as a story and I do know that The Blind Owl is one of the most interesting treatments of mental illness in fiction that I have read.