The Blind Owl in Read a book from each country

Sep 06, 2020 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: banned-books, read2020, middle-east-2020, translated, location-iran

In my research for my year of focus on the Middle East, I discovered a book that is considered a classic from Iran that is not allowed in Iran. I will admit I found it quite impenetrable albeit mercifully short. The narrator appears to encounter a dead body that reminds him of another story and then there is a shift to all italics for 2/3 of the book while he describes opium dreams with a lot of repetition. He calls his wife The Whore and mentions the smell of the end of a cucumber a lot. I can ...more

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Dec 06, 2011 mussolet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: region-middle-east, read-notmine-c

"The Blind Owl" is hailed as a classic of modern Iranian literature. Apart from this, is has caused quite a stir when the suicide rate in the country went up after the publication of this book. And indeed, my own copy has an introduction telling the reader to refrain from reading or to read at their own risk. Naturally, telling me not to do something will have the exact opposite result...

First off, I can see why this is hailed as a classic.
Never before, neither in Middle Eastern nor in Western "The Blind Owl" is hailed as a classic of modern Iranian literature. Apart from this, is has caused quite a stir when the suicide rate in the country went up after the publication of this book. And indeed, my own copy has an introduction telling the reader to refrain from reading or to read at their own risk. Naturally, telling me not to do something will have the exact opposite result...

First off, I can see why this is hailed as a classic.
Never before, neither in Middle Eastern nor in Western nor in any other literature have I read an account of someone going absolutely mental that felt this real. The protagonist, who first describes his imagined experiences during what feels like a drugged roadtrip after an even more unbelievable experience in his own room, and then goes on to describe the life of someone in his state of mind, is getting madder with every page of this book. The book which he apparently detests writing, even going so far as saying "However, 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!" (p. 65).

There is no well-constructed plot here, and certainly the only brilliance lies in being at least as much structured and coherent as to help a "normal" person read through the entire thing.
I can't say whether it would be easier to read for someone who has experienced the deep kind of depression or even lunacy before, but it is easy to see how someone with a preset mind can be afflicted by a novel like this, full of quotes like the following: "The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of live. At an age when we have not yet learnt the language of men if at times we pause in our play it is that we may listen to the voice of death ..." (p. 117). There is not much to help you stay sane yourself while reading it, apart from the kind advice not to read it all in one go.

That being said, I don't particularly want to relive the experience of reading this book. But at the same time I can see the appeal, and it IS a brilliant piece of literature, fully achieving what it sets out to do. Therefore I'm giving out four stars, even though such a rating is normally reserved for books I'll definitely read again. ...more

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Nov 16, 2013 J rated it it was ok

Shelves: iranian-literature

On the grand scale of misanthropic, vitrolic narrators, Hedayat's creation is pretty milquetoast. And his perpetual woman hating is tiresome and hopelessly dated. But the book does have some beautiful images and the way those images overlap and recur is clever, not brilliant, but clever. The whole thing is kind of half baked and feels more like someone's juvinilia than a great work of literature, which is apparently its reputation. ...more

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