Launch of Official Website for Sadegh Hedayat - 2003-10-05

The official website of the late Sadegh Hedayat, a renowned Iranian writer, has recently been launched by the Hedayat Office. Sadegh Hedayat, arguably the most recognized contemporary Iranian writer, was born on February 17, 1903, in Tehran. He entered elementary school at the Tehran Seminary in 1908 and began his secondary education at Dar ul-Funun High School in 1914. However, in 1916, he experienced eye problems that interrupted his studies, but he continued his education at Saint Louis School in Tehran in 1917, where he became acquainted with the French language and literature. In 1925, Hedayat completed his secondary education and in 1926, he was sent to Belgium with a group of other Iranian students to continue his studies. After studying in Belgium and then France, he returned to Tehran in 1930 and was employed at the National Bank. After several years of changing jobs and traveling to India to learn the Pahlavi language, he began working as a translator at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran in 1940. He collaborated with the magazine Sokhan in 1943 and with the magazine Payam Noor in 1945. Eventually, in 1950, he moved to Paris, where he committed suicide by gas on April 8, 1951, at the age of 48. Hedayat is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Among the works of this talented Iranian writer are 'The Benefits of Vegetarianism' (1927), 'Alive Buried' (1929), 'Parvin, Daughter of Sasan' (1930), the collection 'Three Drops of Blood' (1932), the collection 'Shadow and Light' (1933), 'The Blind Owl' (1935), the collection 'The Stray Dog' (1942), 'Haji Agha' (1945), and more. The official website of Sadegh Hedayat now offers topics such as a timeline of works, short stories, bibliographies, news and reports, photos, paintings, and postcards of Hedayat to the audience. Interestingly, visitors to this website can read the complete and correct texts of many of this writer's short stories for free in the short stories section. Currently, the texts of the collections 'The Stray Dog', 'Shadow and Light', 'Alive Buried', and 'Three Drops of Blood' are available, and according to the website's officials, all of Hedayat's short stories will gradually be made available. The website address is: http://www.sadeghhedayat.com