Mordeh Bād Soqrāṭ Persian 2025

Dead Be Socrates, a novel by Mehdi Foroutan, follows the story of a middle-aged man named Socrates who works in the archives department of the civil registry. He suffers from bone tuberculosis and, alongside his physical deterioration, struggles with deep psychological pressure. His father’s suicide—the only person he lived with and the closest figure in his life—marks the beginning of major upheavals. After this event, Socrates becomes increasingly preoccupied with death and its meaning, and the world around him begins to take on a strange, distorted shape.

Socrates interacts with several key figures: the landlord and his wife, his colleagues at the office, a physician named Dr. Ayat, and Leila, his former classmate and past lover. Each of these relationships reflects a different aspect of his inner condition—his desire for release, his loneliness, or his entanglement with the past. His connection with Leila recalls a period of his previous life in a foreign country, a memory that lingers and keeps him suspended in a state of emotional limbo.

Midway through the narrative, while watching a wildlife documentary, Socrates experiences a striking mental image: a rabbit, in the very instant it is hunted by a hyena, seems to be transformed into the body of the predator itself. For him, this image becomes a metaphor for both immortality and the inherent cruelty of existence. From this point on, he embarks on an inner, symbolic struggle—one that carries both a Don Quixote–like spirit and a tone that is at once absurd and bitter.

Much of the novel is devoted to his reflections on death, failure, and human relationships. His illness and obesity deepen his isolation, pushing him further from others and drawing the narrative into the realm of his interior world. The writing style is simple and direct, relying heavily on everyday experiences, brief dialogues, and the flow of Socrates’s thoughts. The result is the portrait of a man oscillating between ordinary life and the contemplation of death, trying to locate meaning within this persistent contradiction.