by Sadiq Hidayat

Sadiq Hidayat (1903-51; also spelled Sadegh Hedayat) spent most of his career at the periphery, exerting only an indirect influence on Iranian culture, but he ended up the most powerful literary voice of his generation. Hidayat grew up in a prominent family that had been at the center of intellectual life since the nineteenth century. His great-grandfather, Reza-Quli Khan (1800-72), was a tutor at the Qajar court and the author of a memoir describing Persian poets. (Reza-Quli Khan’s pen-name, Hidayat or “guide,” was the origin of the family name.) Technocrats and advisors to the government were numerous in the Hidayat family. His grandfather was Minister of Sciences; an uncle was director of the college of science and European languages Dar al- Funun; another was the Shah’s physician. Hidayat himself received a secondary education at the exclusive French high school...