Sadegh (or Sadeq) Hedayat (in Persian: صادق هدایت), is Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories. He was born in Tehran on 17 February 1903 to an aristocratic family and was educated at the Lycée Français (French high school) in that city. In 1925 he was among a select few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There he initially pursued dentistry before giving this up for engineering. After four years in France and Belgium, Hedayat returned to Iran where he held various jobs for short periods.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe and Kafka intrigued him the most. 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 on 9 April 1951 in Paris and is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery there.

Works

• Fiction
  • 1930 Zindeh be-gur (Buried Alive). A collection of 8 short stories.
  • 1931 Sayeh-ye Mughul (Mongol Shadow)
  • 1932 Seh qatreh khun (Three Drops of Blood)
  • 1933 Sayeh Rushan (Chiaroscuro)
    Alaviyeh Khanum (Madame `Alaviyeh)
    Vagh Vagh Sahab (Mister Bow Wow)
  • 1937 Buf-e Kur (The Blind Owl)
  • 1942 Sag-e Velgard (The Stray Dog)
  • 1944 Velengari (Tittle-tattle)
    Ab-e Zendegi (The Elixir of Life)
  • 1945 Haji Aqa (Mr. Haji)
  • 1946 Farda (Tomorrow)
  • 1947 Tup-e Murvari (The Pearl Cannon)

• Drama (1930-1946)
  • Parvin dokhtar-e Sasan (Parvin, Sassan's Daughter)
  • Maziyar
  • Afsaneh-ye Afarinesh (The Fable of Creation)

• Travelogues
  • Esfahan nesf-e Jahan (Isfahan: Half the World)
  • Ru-ye Jadeh-ye Namnak (On the Wet Road), unpublished, written in 1935.

• Studies, Criticism and Miscellanea
  • Rubaiyat-e Hakim Umar-e Khayyam (Khayyam's Quatrains) 1923
  • Ensan va Hayvan (Man and Animal) 1924
  • Marg (Death) 1927
  • Favayed-e Giyah'khari (The Advantages of Vegetarianism) 1957
  • Hekayat-e Ba Natijeh (The Story with a Moral) 1932
  • Taranehha-ye Khayyam (The Melodies of Khayyam) 1934
  • Chaykuvski (Tchaikovsky) 1940
  • Dar Piramun-e Lughat-e Furs-e Asadi (About Asadi's Persian Dictionary) 1940
  • Shiveh-ye Nuvin dar Tahqiq-e Adabi (A New Method of Literary Research) 1940
  • Dastan-e Naz (The Story of Naz) 1941
  • Shivehha-ye Nuvin Dar Shir-e Farsi (New Trends in Persian Poetry) 1941
  • A Review of the Film "Mulla Nasru'd Din" 1944
  • A Literary Criticism on the Persian Translation of Gogol's The Government Inspector 1944
  • Chand Nukteh Dar Bar-ye Vis va Ramin (Some Notes on Vis and Ramin) 1945
  • Payam-e Kafka (The Message of Kafka) 1948
  • al-Be`thatu-Islamiya Ellal-Belad'l Afranjiya (An Islamic Mission in the European Lands), undated.

Sources

• List of Sadeq Hedayat's Works
• Modern Persian Prose Literature by Hassan Kamshad, ISBN 0936347724

External links

• Sadeq Hedayat's Life by Iraj Bashiri
• Sadeq Hedayat's Corner, further articles and English translations by Iraj Bashiri
• Persian Language & Literature — Sadeq Hedayat
• Hedayat Page (in French)
• Sadegh Hedayat Site (in Persian)
• Sokhan — online literary magazine (in Persian)
• Adabkade (in Persian)
• Hedayat's art work

Further references

• Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: Life and legend of an Iranian writer, I.B. Taurus, 2000. ISBN 1860644139
• Hassan Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature, Ibex Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0936347724
• Michael C. Hillmann, Hedayat's "the Blind Owl" Forty Years After,Middle East Monograph No. 4, Univ of Texas Press, 1978.
• Iraj Bashiri, Hedayat's Ivory Tower: Structural Analysis of The Blind Owl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1975.
• Iraj Bashiri, The Fiction of Sadeq Hedayat, Mazda Publishers, 1984.
• Sayers, Carol, The Blind Owl and Other Hedayat Stories, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1984.