Blind Owl Sadeq Hedayats masterpiece tells the story of a young pencase painter and his heartbreak Isolated and alone he mourns the loss of a mysterious love while descending into recollections and dreams frosted over by opium and alcohol and imbued with the images he paints an old man a cypress tree a beautiful woman a waterlily In stark lyrical terms the puzzle of the pencase painters grief is slowly unveiled As inscrutable as it is universal Blind Owl is the seminal work of Persian modernism and one of the great novels of the twentieth century