Book #12 for 2023, The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, which I read in the above recent Penguin edition (which uses different spellings of both name and title). In a certain way, this is not a million miles removed from Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, at least if that book had been a lot more drug-addled. Beyond that, I’m a bit stumped. Hedayat is considered the pioneer of literary modernism in Iranian literature, which is a field I know nothing about so I’ll defer to those who do… Hedayat’s technique comes across clearly in translation (along with some choice phrases and images that are presumably why Hedayat’s work is STILL banned in Iran 70+ years after his death), rather more so than his intention; the book’s propensity for repetition of phrases and events (insofar as there are any) becomes obvious fairly quickly, lots of echoes and resonances and all that between the two parts of the book, but the reason for these things… I don’t know. One of the longest-feeling 100-page books I’ve read, I can see I’ll need to have a second go at this in future if I’m to get anything from it.
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