black light

Black Light by Galway Kinnell (Houghton Mifflin, 1966)

The only novel by the poet Galway Kinnell, set in Iran. 

Jashmid, our hero, a widowed rug repairer, kills a pimpish nefarious holy man who besmirches the virtue of his teen-aged daughter.  After a comically unsuccessful attempt to confess at the police station, Jashmid flees into the desert where he meets an elderly itinerant merchant and his camel.  They travel across the desert towards the merchant’s hometown, but both merchant and camel are dead by the time they arrive.  Jashmid has a passionate affair with the merchant’s widow, but must flee once again, this time to the big bad city of Tehran, where he finds shelter and company in a small whorehouse, where he contracts syphilis and deteriorates.  A harsh, unremitting book, but engaging and unusual, and Kinnell’s lucid and forthright prose is both evocative and a pleasure to read.