Considered the most important work of modern Iranian literature, The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadegh Hedayat's masterpice details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught in the sandstorm of Hedayat's bleak vision of the human condition. The Blind Owl, which has been translated into many foreign languages, has often been compared to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.

One of the most outstanding Persian writers of the last century is represented in this unique collection of stories, most appearing here for the first time in English This collection of short stories, previously unpublished in English, displays the disturbing and evocative force of Hedayat’s writing, and confirms his place in the literary canon. They depict a world of revelation, uncanny similarity, grotesquery, and insanity. The title story, “Three Drops of Blood”, follows the protagonist’s increasingly unstable mental state through the repeated occurrence of three drops of blood, while “Hadji Murat” depicts an almost Joycean epiphany in classically understated terms, as a man mistakes another woman for his wife. These are stories that, though set in a distinctive milieu, deal with universal truths and cut to the very essence of humanity.

Originally written in Persian, The Blind Owl is predominantly a love story, an unconventional love story that elicits visions and nightmare reveries from the depths of the reader's subconscious. A young man, an old man and a beautiful young girl perform, as if framed within a Persian miniature, a ritual of destruction as gradually the narrator, and the reader, discover the meaning hidden within the dreams. This unforgettable story contains a unique blend of the mystery of the Arabian Nights and an acutely contemporary sense of panic and hallucination.