Sadegh Hedayat


'''Sadegh Hedayat''' (In Persian: صادق هدایت) (February 17, 1903 - April 9, 1951) is Iran's foremost writer of prose fiction and short-story. He was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family and was schooled at the French high school in Tehran. In 1925 he was among a select few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies, initially pursuing dentistry, which he gave up for engineering. After four years in France and Belgium, Hedayat returned to Iran and held various jobs for short periods. The works of Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe and Kafka, intrigued him the most. Consequently, Hedayat devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. In his latter years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran’s decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, specially his peers, Hedayat’s last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression. Hedayat's most enduring work is the short novel The Blind Owl (1937). He ended his life in 1951, in Paris and is buried at Père Lachaise cemetery.

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Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh

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