| Summary: | Sadeq Hedayat's fictional works may be divided into four groups: romantic nationalism, critical realism, satire and psycho-fiction. The psych-fictions are not quite the same as the traditional psychological fiction, but stories in which the psychology is unplanned and incidental. They all share a macabre atmosphere in which death, suicide and failure are common features. The Blind Owl represents the peak of this group of Hedayat's fictions, since he wrote such stories both before and after it. While the affinity among all of them can be easily observed, two of the earlier stories particularly anticipate The Blind Owl: The Puppet behind the Curtain and Three Drops of Blood. There is, however, a basic difference between The Blind Owl and Three Drops of Blood, on the one hand, and all the rest of his works-including The Puppet behind the Curtainon the other: those two stories use modernistmore specifically surrealisttechniques, whereas all Hedayat's other works have been written in the critical realist style. © 2012 Taylor and Francis Group.
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