June Translation Book Club

Join us for our next Translation Book Club meeting to discuss the work of Iranian author Sadeq Hedayat (translated by Sassan Tabatabai), where we'll be looking at his 1936 novel, Blind Owl. This event is open to all, so feel free to show up if you've read the book and want to talk about it; and if you haven't picked it up yet, but would like to participate, we have copies available in store! Masks are not required, but will be provided for free at the door.


ABOUT THE BOOK

A new English translation of one of the most important, controversial Iranian novels of the twentieth century.

Winner of the 2023 Lois Roth Persian Translation

Written by one of the greatest Iranian writers of the twentieth century, Blind Owl tells a two-part story of an isolated narrator with a fragile relationship with time and reality. In first person, the narrator offers a string of hazy, dreamlike recollections fueled by opium and alcohol. He spends time painting the exact same scene on the covers of pen cases: an old man wearing a cape and turban sitting under a cypress tree, separated by a small stream from a beautiful woman in black who offers him a water lily. In a one-page transition, the reader finds the narrator covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrest him. In part two, readers glimpse the grim realities that unlock the mysteries of the first part. In a new translation that reflects Hedayat’s conversational, confessional tone, Blind Owl joins the ranks of classics by Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky that explore the dark recesses of the human psyche.

You may also like the following events from Argo Bookshop:

• Next month, 13th June, 06:00 pm, Conversation with Adam Kahane in Côte Saint-luc
• Next month, 19th June, 07:00 pm, June Romance Book Club! in Montreal
• This July, 3rd July, 07:00 pm, Book Talk with Beth Kander and Jacqueline Goldfinger in Montreal

Also check out other Arts events in Montreal, Meetups in Montreal, Literary Art events in Montreal.