Hedayat was born to a northern Iranian aristocratic family in Tehran and was educated at Collège Saint-Louis (French catholic school) and Dar ol-Fonoon (1914–1916). In 1925, he was among a selected few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies.

There, he initially went on to study engineering in Belgium, after a year he gave this up to study architecture in France.

While there, he gave up architecture to pursue dentistry. In this period he became acquainted with Therese, a Parisian with whom he had a love affair.

In 1927 Hedayat attempted suicide by throwing himself into the river Marne, however he was rescued by a fishing boat.

After four years in France and Belgium, where he befriended Sartre, who was to remain a lifelong friend, he finally surrendered his scholarship and returned home in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree. In Iran he held various jobs for short periods.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore.

The works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant intrigued him the most.

During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches.

His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French.

He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing.

There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values.

In his later years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran's decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers.

Feeling alienated by everyone around him, especially by his peers, Hedayat's last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression.

Hedayat travelled and stayed in India from 1937 until 1939. In Bombay he completed and published his most enduring work, The Blind Owl, whose writing he started as early as 1930 in Paris.

The book was praised by many including Henry Miller and André Breton. It has been called "one of the most important literary works in the Persian language".

At the end of 1950, Hedayat left Iran for Paris. There, on 4 April 1951, he committed suicide by gassing himself in a small rented apartment on 37 Rue Championnet.

He was buried at the division 85 of Père Lachaise cemetery. His funeral was attended by a number of intimate friends and close acquaintances, both Iranian and Frenchmen.

Current censorship

His work is coming under increasing attack in Europe from political Islamists, and many of his novels (Haji Aqa in particular) are no longer stocked in some French bookshops and libraries.

The novels The Blind Owl and Haji Aqa were banned from the 18th Tehran International Book Fair in 2005.

The Blind Owl contains a great deal of Buddhist and Hindu imagery. In Haji Aqa his characters explore the lack of meritocracy in Iran:

    "In order for the people to be kept in line, they must be kept hungry, needy, illiterate, and superstitious. If the grocer's child becomes literate, he not only will criticise my speech, but he will also utter words that neither you nor I will understand.... What would happen if the forage-seller's child turns out intelligent and capable—and mine, the son of a Haji, turns out lazy and foolish?"

In November 2006, republication of Hedayat's work in uncensored form was banned in Iran, as part of a sweeping purge.

However, surveillance of book-stalls is limited and it is apparently still possible to purchase the originals second-hand. The official website is also still online. Some material discussing the issue of censorship include:

Works

    Fiction


        1930 Buried Alive (Zende be gūr). A collection of 9 short stories.
        1931 Mongol Shadow (Sāye-ye Moqol)
        1932 Three Drops of Blood (Se qatre khūn)
        1933 Chiaroscuro (Sāye-ye roushan)
        1934 Mister Bow Wow (Vagh Vagh Sahāb)
        1936 Sampingé (in French)
        1936 Lunatique (in French)
        1937 The Blind Owl (Boof-e koor)
        1942 The Stray Dog (Sag-e welgard)
        1943 Mistress Alaviyeh (Alaviye chānum)
        1944 Velengārī (Tittle-tattle)
        1944 The Elixir of Life (Āb-e zendegi)
        1945 Hājī āqā
        1946 Tomorrow (Fardā)
        1947 The Pearl Cannon (Tūp-e morvarid)‘’
        Dāsh Akol

    Drama (1930–1946)

        Parvin dokhtar-e Sāsān (Parvin, Sassan's Daughter)
        Māzīyār
        Afsāne-ye āfarīnesh (The Fable of Creation)

    Travelogues

        Esfahān nesf-e jahān (Isfahan: Half of the World)
        Rū-ye jādde-ye namnāk (On the Wet Road), unpublished, written in 1935.

    Studies, Criticism and Miscellanea

        Rubāyyāt-e Hakim Omar-e Khayyam (Khayyam's Quatrains) 1923
        Ensān va heyvān (Man and Animal) 1924
        Marg (Death) 1927
        Favāyed-e giyāhkhori (The Advantages of Vegetarianism) 1927
        Hekāyat-e bā natije (The Story with a Moral) 1932
        Taranehā-ye Khayyām (The Songs of Khayyam) 1934
        Chāykovski (Tchaikovsky) 1940
        Dar pirāmun-e Loqat-e Fārs-e Asadi (About Asadi's Persian Dictionary) 1940
        Shive-ye novin dar tahqiq-e adabi (A New Method of Literary Research) 1940
        Dāstan-e Nāz (The Story of Naz) 1941
        Shivehā-ye novin dar she'r-e Pārsi (New Trends in Persian Poetry) 1941
        A review of the film Molla Nasrud'Din 1944
        A literary criticism on the Persian translation of Gogol's The Government Inspector 1944
        Chand nokte dar bāre-ye Vis va Rāmin (Some Notes on Vis and Ramin) 1945
        Payām-e Kāfkā (The Message of Kafka) 1948
        Al-be`thatu-Islamiya ellal-belad'l Afranjiya (An Islamic Mission in the European Lands), undated.

    Translations

        French language translations:
            1931 Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov
            1948 In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
            1944 Before the Law by Franz Kafka
            1950 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (along with Hasan Qaemian)
            1950 The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre
            1950 Tales of Two Countries by Alexander Lange Kielland
            1950 Blind Geronimo and his Brother by Arthur Schnitzler
        Pahlavi language translations:
            1943 Kārname-ye Ardashir-e-Pāpākān (The Book of the Deeds of Ardashir [son of] Papakan)
            1940 Gojaste Abālish
            1945 Āmadan-e shāh Bahrām-e Varjavand (Return of shah Bahram Varjavand)
            1944 Zand va Homān Yasn

Films about Hedayat

    In 1987 Raul Ruiz made the feature film 'La Chouette aveugle' in France a loose adaption of Hedayat's novel 'The Blind Owl'. It's formal innovations led critic and filmmaker to declare the film 'French cinema’s most beautiful jewel of the past decade.'

    Hedayat's last day and night was adapted into the short film, The Sacred and the Absurd, which was featured in the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004.

    In 2005 Iranian film director Khosrow Sinai has made a docudrama about Hedayat entitled Goftogu ba saye = Talking with a shadow. Its main theme is the influence of Western movies such as Golem, Nosferatu, Dracula on Hedayat.