Paris 2015: Sadegh Hedayat, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #24

Sadegh Hedayat (1903–51) was an Iranian writer and translator particularly significant for breaking with the Iranian poetic tradition and establishing the novel/short story as an important part of Iranian literary history. He wrote in Persian and is especially noted for La Chouette aveugle (The Blind Owl), which was first published in a small number of roneotyped copies in Bombay in 1936, later to be published in 1941 in Teheran. Kafka was one of his major influences, and André Breton greeted this novel as a classic of surrealism.

Hedeyat was a supreme pessimist and died in poverty: he painstakingly gassed himself in his flat at 37 Rue Championnet in the 18th arrondissement.