Black Light

About Black Light

Black Light is a voyage of discovery and transformation. Set in Iran, it tells the story of Jamshid, a quiet simple carpet mender, who one day suddenly commits a murder and is forced to flee. With this violent act his old life ends and a strange new existence begins.

Galway Kinnell combines his gift for precise imagery with a storyteller’s skill in this journey across the Iranian desert—away from the fragile self–righteous virtues of adopted moral tradition, into the disorder and sexual confusion of agonizing self–knowledge. First published in 1966 by Houghton Mifflin, this extensively revised paperback edition of Black Light brings a distinguished novel back into print.