Jahangir Hedayat, the nephew of renowned Iranian short story writer Sadeq Hedayat, has compiled all the works translated by the writer in one book.
Titled ‘Sadeq Hedayat and His Translations’, it has been published by Amroud Publications in 171 pages, Mehr News Agency wrote.
Hedayat (1903-1951) was intensely drawn to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
He translated into Persian many of Kafka’s works, including ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘In the Penal Colony’, for which he wrote a thought-provoking introduction called ‘Payām-e Kafka’ (Kafka’s Message).
The writer introduced modernist techniques into Persian fiction and is considered one of the greatest Iranian writers of the 20th century. Hedayat’s vision of human existence and the inability to effect a change for the good as absurd made him withdraw from his friends and seek solitude. In 1951, overwhelmed by despair, he left Tehran and went to Paris, where he took his own life.
