The Blind Owl - Sadegh Hedayat, Naveed Noori (translator)

Category: Literature, Novel
Language: English
Keywords: India Iran macabre Psychological Sadeq Hedayat Surrealism Symbolism

Written by Sadegh Hedayat, Naveed Noori (translator)
Read by Sean Antony Farmiloe
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged

| Authorized by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation - First Translation into English Based on the Bombay Edition (Hedayat’s handwritten text) |

On the surface, this work seems to be a tale of doomed love, but with each minute basic facts become obscure and the listener soon realizes this book is much more than a love story. Although The Blind Owl has been compared to the works of Kafka, Rilke and Poe, this work defies categorization.

Written by one of the greatest Iranian writers of the 20th century, Blind Owl tells a three-part story of a pen-case painter, an isolated narrator with a fragile relationship with time and reality. In part one, he relates his own story in the first person, in a string of hazy, dreamlike recollections fueled by opium and alcohol. He spends time painting the covers of pen cases only to paint the exact same scene: an old man wearing a cape and turban sitting under a cypress tree, separated by a small stream from a beautiful woman in black who is bending down to offer him a waterlily. The novel transitions to a short part two, where the listener finds the narrator covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrest him. Part three gives listeners a glimpse into the grim realities that unlock the mysteries of the first part.

March 25, 2022
4 hrs and 9 mins

(To skip the Translator’s Preface, go to the 38 min mark)