This is a difficult book to rate and review, especially for a reader like myself who is not acquainted enough with the historical and cultural context of the work and author or Persian literature in general to have much of an opinion short of my personal experience of reading it. As a work of literature, it's very fascinating--regarded as the first work of modern Persian literature, the novella uses elements from non-Persian literature, like gothic horror, modernist surrealism and existentialism, to explore the cultural and politics shift from pre-Islamic to Islamic Iran, a shift that was alienating for intellectuals like Hedayat himself. It's heady stuff, the kind of literary stuff I like a lot. I just wish I understood it better.

For many contemporary readers with little to no background knowledge about Hedayat or Iran of his day, I suspect this work might not be a very accessible. Even though I did some research on the novella, including reading the introduction to this translation, as well as some reading on Hedayat and Iran during his time, I felt there were many places in the novella that I sensed Hedayat had something very much in mind with his symbolism, surrealism and allusions, but due to my ignorance, I simply had no clue. I will have to be content with a general idea of what Hadayat was attempting with this novella while I leave with many questions about Hedayat's writing style, literary choices and other elements with the text that will have to go unanswered, as I'm not able to devote my life to becoming a modern Persian lit expert. Nonetheless I feel I got enough out of this to say it's a very intriguing work, but perhaps one that would sadly have a very limited appeal for contemporary Western readers.