Surrealist Prose Fiction — 1937

Boof Koor — The Blind Owl

بوفِ کور — صادق هدایت

The most celebrated work of Iranian fiction — a surrealist descent into madness, mortality, and solitude. The first authorized bilingual paragraph-by-paragraph translation, from the original 1937 Bombay handwritten edition.

Sadegh Hedayat — Tehran 1903 — Paris 1951

Sadegh
Hedayat

صادق هدایت
17 February 1903, Tehran — 9 April 1951, Paris

Sadegh Hedayat was an Iranian writer, translator, and intellectual — the first major Iranian author to adopt literary modernism. His novella Boof Koor (The Blind Owl), written in Bombay in 1936 and first printed in 50 handwritten copies in 1937, stands alone in Persian literature as its most original, most disturbing, and most enduring work of prose fiction.

Hedayat was deeply influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Eastern mysticism. His writing style is characterized by vivid imagery, introspection, and a deliberate blurring of the boundary between reality and imagination — a technique he pushed further in Boof Koor than any Persian writer before or since.

1937
First published, Bombay
50
Original copies printed
3
Translators in our edition
1st
Authorized bilingual edition
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بوفِ کور
The Blind Owl
صادق هدایت — Sadegh Hedayat
Written1936, Bombay, India
First printed1937 — 50 handwritten copies
GenreSurrealist prose, psychological fiction
FormatParagraph-by-paragraph bilingual
Source textOriginal 1937 Bombay Edition
AuthorizedSadegh Hedayat Foundation
TranslatorsYahya Nazer & Faraz Khoshbakhtian
IntroductionJaleh Mottahedin
The Opening Lines

The Most Famous Sentence in Persian Fiction

The opening of Boof Koor — one of the most haunting first paragraphs in world literature. Toggle between Farsi and English. This is prose, translated paragraph by paragraph, not line by line.

In life there are wounds that slowly devour and carve the soul, like a worm in seclusion.

These wounds cannot be spoken of to anyone. People consider such things impossible and incredible. They call it fantasy, delusion. But when such a wound exists, one is obliged to be silent — to bear it alone — to carry its darkness like an inheritance no one asked for.

There are people who do not understand the pain of others. They cannot. Their lives flow smoothly — like a clear, shallow stream — while others drag the weight of their shadows through every waking hour and every sleepless night.

I write only for my shadow — the shadow cast on the wall by the light of my lamp. I must introduce myself to it. It knows me better than any living person.
Hedayat — Boof Koor (The Blind Owl), 1937 — Opening Paragraph — Translated by Yahya Nazer & Faraz Khoshbakhtian
در زندگی زخم‌هایی هست که مثلِ خوره در انزوا روح را آهسته می‌خورد و می‌تراشد.

این دردها را نمی‌توان به کسی اظهار کرد، چون عموماً اسمِ آن را توهّم می‌گذارند، آن را دروغ و افسانه می‌دانند. اما وقتی چنین زخمی هست، باید خاموش ماند — تنها تحمل کرد — تاریکی‌اش را مثلِ میراثی که کسی نخواسته با خود حمل کرد.

آدم‌هایی هستند که درد دیگران را نمی‌فهمند. نمی‌توانند بفهمند. زندگی‌شان مثلِ جوی آبِ صافی روان است — در حالی که دیگران سنگینیِ سایه‌هاشان را در هر ساعتِ بیداری و هر شبِ بی‌خوابی با خود می‌کشند.

من تنها برای سایه‌ام می‌نویسم — سایه‌ای که از پرتوِ چراغم روی دیوار می‌افتد. باید خودم را به او معرفی کنم. او مرا بهتر از هر آدمِ زنده‌ای می‌شناسد.
صادق هدایت — بوفِ کور، ۱۳۱۶ — آغازِ داستان
About the Author

Hedayat — Iran's First Modernist

Sadegh Hedayat was born in Tehran on 17 February 1903 into an aristocratic family with deep roots in Persian intellectual life. His great-uncle Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat was a noted 19th-century poet and literary historian. After schooling in Tehran, Hedayat traveled in the 1920s to Belgium and France — studying engineering, architecture, dentistry, and finally literature — before returning to Iran.

In Paris he encountered Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and the European surrealists. He was also drawn deeply to Persian folklore, Zoroastrian mythology, and the ancient Pahlavi language — which he went to Bombay in 1936 to learn, from the Parsi Zoroastrian community. During that year in Bombay, he wrote Boof Koor. He hand-wrote it, then printed 50 duplicated copies and distributed them among friends outside Iran, with a note on the title page: "not for distribution in Iran."

He returned to Tehran, where he spent his remaining years in a worsening depression, increasingly alienated from the literary establishment and from political life. His work continued — satirical fiction, historical stories, and cultural criticism — but his personal darkness deepened. On 9 April 1951, in a Paris apartment, he sealed the doors and windows and opened the gas. He was 48 years old.

"The presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life."
حضورِ مرگ همه‌چیزِ موهوم را نابود می‌کند. ما فرزندانِ مرگیم و مرگ است که ما را از جاذبه‌های فریبنده و موهومِ زندگی رها می‌کند.
Sadegh Hedayat — Boof Koor (The Blind Owl), 1937
Key Facts — Hedayat & Boof Koor
Full NameSadegh Hedayat (صادق هدایت)
Born17 February 1903, Tehran, Iran
Died9 April 1951, Paris, France (age 48)
GenreSurrealism, modernism, psychological fiction
Written1936, Bombay, India
First pub.1937, Bombay — 50 handwritten private copies
Iran pub.1941, Tehran (after censorship restrictions lifted)
Our editionParagraph-by-paragraph Farsi + English
AuthorizedSadegh Hedayat Foundation
InfluencesPoe, Kafka, Rilke, Persian folklore, Zoroastrianism
ThemesDeath, solitude, madness, identity, the absurd
The Novella

The Story of the Blind Owl

Boof Koor has no conventional plot. It is a fever dream — a descent that circles back on itself without resolution. An unnamed narrator, a painter of pen cases, is haunted by a single image he compulsively paints: an old man under a cypress tree reaching for a lotus flower offered by a woman in black.

The novella is divided into two parts that mirror and distort each other. In Part I, the narrator is in a dreamlike state — the woman appears, dies, and he buries her. In Part II, he wakes into what seems like ordinary life in the city of Rey, but the same figures — the old man, the woman, death itself — return in new forms. The confessions do not follow linear time. They spiral, repeat, and layer.

Throughout, the narrator addresses his confessions to the shadow on his wall resembling an owl — his only true audience, his alter ego, his death-self. The blind owl is blindness, solitude, and witness all at once.

I
The Dream World
The narrator is in a locked room. Through a hole in the wall he glimpses the woman in black who offers a lotus flower to an old man. She enters his room, dies in his arms. He buries her. He tries to paint her face but cannot — his hand always renders the same image.
II
The Waking World
The narrator awakens into the city of Rey — a world of vendors, a cold wife he calls "the bitch," and the same old man selling food outside his window. The waking world is no less nightmarish than the dream. The same figures haunt him in new disguises.
Recurring Symbols
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The Blind Owl

The shadow on the wall resembling an owl — the narrator's only audience. Blindness, solitude, and the witness of death.

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The Cypress & the Old Man

The old man under the cypress tree — eternal, motionless, present in both worlds. A symbol of death that predates the narrator.

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The Pen Case Painting

The scene the narrator compulsively paints — the same image, always. The compulsive repetition of an unbearable image is the structure of the entire novella.

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The Woman in Black

The mysterious, silent woman who appears and dies — both the Beloved and Death itself, idealized and destructive in equal measure.

The Bombay Edition

The 50-Copy Handwritten Original

Boof Koor was not published in the ordinary sense. Hedayat hand-wrote the manuscript in Bombay in 1936 and produced 50 duplicated copies — each stamped with the note: "not for publication in Iran." He knew what the censors would make of it.

Our bilingual translation is the first to be based on this original 1937 Bombay edition — and the first to be authorized by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation. Previous translations into English (D.P. Costello 1957, Iraj Bashiri 1974) were not bilingual and not paragraph-by-paragraph. Ours is the first edition to let a reader follow the original Farsi and the English simultaneously — paragraph by paragraph, as the story breathes.

1936, Bombay

Manuscript Written by Hand

Hedayat writes Boof Koor in Bombay while learning Pahlavi from the Zoroastrian community. He hand-writes the manuscript.

1937, Bombay

50 Copies Printed & Distributed

50 duplicated copies printed privately. Distributed to friends outside Iran. Title page: "not for distribution in Iran."

1941, Tehran

First Iranian Publication

Published in Iran after censorship restrictions were loosened following the abdication of Reza Shah. Immediate literary sensation.

1957 & 1974

First English Translations

D.P. Costello (1957) and Iraj Bashiri (1974) produce the first English translations — literary, not bilingual. No Farsi original alongside.

2023, Farsi-Poems

First Authorized Bilingual Edition

Yahya Nazer & Faraz Khoshbakhtian produce the first paragraph-by-paragraph bilingual edition, authorized by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation, from the original Bombay text.

What Makes This Edition Different

The First Paragraph-by-Paragraph Bilingual Edition

Every other book in the Farsi-Poems series translates poetry line by line. Boof Koor is the sole prose work — and the translation format changes accordingly: paragraph by paragraph, so the rhythm of Hedayat's prose is preserved in both languages.

This is also the only work in our series not from the classical era. Hedayat was born in 1903. Boof Koor was written in 1936. It bridges the classical Persian tradition — Hedayat knew his Hafez, his Khayyam — with the existentialist, surrealist modernism of 20th-century Europe.

Authorized by the Sadegh Hedayat Foundation

The only bilingual English edition with formal authorization from the body protecting Hedayat's literary estate.

Based on the Original 1937 Bombay Edition

Translated from Hedayat's own hand-written text — not from later edited or censored Iranian editions.

Paragraph-by-Paragraph Bilingual Format

Every paragraph in Farsi faces its English translation — so readers can follow both simultaneously as they would with our poetry volumes.

Includes Jaleh Mottahedin's Introduction & Analysis

A scholarly introduction and literary analysis by Jaleh Mottahedin — essential context for understanding Hedayat's life, his world, and the novel's symbolic system.

Boof Koor vs. Our Poetry Volumes

Aspect
Detail
Genre
Prose fiction — not poetry
Era
Modern (1937) — not classical
Format
Paragraph by paragraph
Volumes
1 single volume
Tone
Dark, surrealist, psychological
Influences
Poe, Kafka — not Sufi tradition
Length
Novella — ~100 pages
Authorization
Hedayat Foundation — unique in series
Amazon KDP Edition

The Bilingual Edition on Amazon

Available in Kindle eBook and Paperback. The complete Farsi text of the original Bombay edition alongside a faithful, paragraph-by-paragraph English translation — with Jaleh Mottahedin's literary introduction and analysis.

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بوفِ کور
The Blind Owl
Farsi translated to English — Paragraph by Paragraph

Boof Koor — The Blind Owl

Authorized by The Sadegh Hedayat Foundation — First Translation Based on the Bombay Edition

The complete text of Sadegh Hedayat's masterwork in the original Farsi, alongside a faithful paragraph-by-paragraph English translation. Every paragraph of the original faces its translation so readers can follow both simultaneously. Includes Jaleh Mottahedin's scholarly introduction and literary analysis — essential context for understanding Hedayat's biography, his literary influences, and the symbolic architecture of the novella.

Authors & Translators
Sadegh Hedayat — Author
Yahya Nazer — Translator
Faraz Khoshbakhtian — Translator
Jaleh Mottahedin — Introduction & Literary Analysis
Kindle eBook Paperback Paragraph-by-paragraph ISBN: 9798857570081 Authorized Edition
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Literary Context

Hedayat's Literary Influences

Boof Koor sits at the intersection of Western modernism and Persian literary tradition — a uniquely Iranian synthesis that no other work in the language has achieved.

Western Influence

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe's gothic horror, unreliable narrators, and tales of psychological disintegration were a profound influence — the narrator's descent into madness, his obsessive repetition, and his relationship with death all echo Poe's world. Hedayat translated several of Poe's stories into Persian.

Western Influence

Franz Kafka

Kafka's alienation, the nightmare logic of ordinary life, and the protagonist who cannot find solid ground in reality all left their mark on Boof Koor's second half — where the waking world of the city of Rey is as hallucinatory as the dream world of Part I.

Surrealism

European Surrealism

During his years in France, Hedayat encountered the surrealists. The non-linear structure, the dissolving boundary between dream and waking, and the repetition of symbolic images across both halves of Boof Koor are unmistakably surrealist in their method.

Persian Tradition

Classical Persian Poetry

Hedayat was deeply read in Khayyam, Hafez, and Persian folklore. Khayyam's themes of impermanence and the shadow of death, Hafez's wine and the Beloved — these flow through Boof Koor's imagery in a darker, more personal register.

Ancient Iran

Zoroastrian Mythology

Hedayat went to Bombay specifically to learn Pahlavi from the Zoroastrian community. Ancient Iranian symbols of death, light, fire, and the owl as a bird of ill omen all permeate Boof Koor with a mythological resonance that goes beyond Western modernism.

Modern Persian

Founding Iranian Modernism

Boof Koor is not only the product of influences — it created one. Hedayat founded the archetype of the alienated Iranian modern narrator: a man in his late twenties, poor, obsessive, troubled by women, haunted by death. Generations of Iranian writers have written in his shadow.

Saadi
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