5. Intellectual Journeys

This chapter addresses Hedayat’s four long narratives. One could label them “novel” or “novella” only with reference to the length of the narrative, because their formal features are specific and do not abide by the rules of narrativity established by European traditions. In this category, The Blind Owl has been the most famous and controversial, but other long narratives, Ms. ’Alaviyeh, Mr. Haji, and The Pearl Cannon, and their significance to his poetics have not been sufficiently studied. The last text, Hedayat’s final, is a key work whose humorous features have hidden a radical critique of colonial history through which a transnational history of modern Iran is delivered. This chapter ends with an extended discussion of Hedayat’s poetics of modernity and how his consciousness of the peripheral status of his national culture in modern history emerged in his fictional creations as formal elements.