Three Drops of Blood

This collection of short stories, previously unpublished in English, displays the disturbing and evocative force of Hedayat’s writing, and confirms his place in the literary canon. They depict a world of revelation, uncanny similarity, grotesquery, and insanity. The title story, “Three Drops of Blood,” follows the protagonist’s increasingly unstable mental state through the repeated occurrence of three drops of blood, while “Hadji Murat” depicts an almost Joycean epiphany in classically understated terms, as a man mistakes another woman for his wife. These are stories that, though set in a distinctive milieu, deal with universal truths and cut to the very essence of humanity.