Reception of Sadegh Hedayat in India

Half a century has passed by and in this period Sadegh Hedayat is one of the profusely translated writers of Iran. His fame has traveled beyond the frontiers of his country after his death in 1951. Though he had lived in India for two years, but at that time the writers and scholars of the subcontinent paid little heed to him and deplorably failed to give him a warm reception in the Indian literary society. After his demise lukewarm attention has been paid to him and some of his writings have been translated in Bengali, Hindi, Malyalam and Urdu languages. The Bengali rendering of Hedayat by Sobur Khan, the Hindi translation of Hedayat by Mukesh Kumar and special issue on Hedayat published by the Saar-Sansar and Bufe Kur in Urdu by Ajmal Kamal deserve a critical assessment to show the reception of Hedayat in Indian literature. The paper shall also show the lack of whole hearted response to Hedayat in the Indian subcontinent owing to a number of reasons.