ABSTRACT
It is characteristic of Hedayat’s psycho-fictions that the fictional elements – it would be stretching it a little to call it “the plot” – are relatively simple. Even in the case of The Blind Owl, the complexity and ambiguity, and hence wide interpretability, of the story is due to the quality of subjective cloudiness, intermingled with the barrage of judgemental narrative, rather than to an elaborate plot. This being the case in general, the story of “Stray Dog” is still one of the simplest of the psycho-fictions. It is about a pedigree dog that gets lost in Varamin, near Tehran, and wanders around while being kicked and cursed by virtually everyone it comes across. Only in one case does a man who happens to be stopping there for a few hours show him kindness and sympathy, an exception that enhances the story’s sense of realism. But in the end he departs, leaving the dog even more lonely and desperate than he was before.
