This blog post was prepared by Lucia Wolf for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics (February 6–22, 2026), to mark the first Winter Olympics officially co-hosted by two cities. The history of this partnership is revealed through Library of Congress collections spanning Victorian guidebooks to Cold War cartography documenting 130 years of evolving collaboration.
Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) was one of Iran’s most prolific post-modernist writers in the first half of the 20th century. He has often been called the “Iranian Kafka,” since many of his stories discuss surrealist themes, dealing with existential angst and nightmarish situations. This blog discusses Hedayat’s most famous works, such as his opus magnum, the Blind Owl, published in 1937. Other novels mentioned in the blog are famous in Iranian pop culture (such as Dash Akol which was made into a movie in the 1970s), while nonfiction works are related to his research on Iranian folklore and mythology. The title of the blog “Hedayat’s Animals” refers to the numerous animal characters found in his stories from his lifelong love of animals.
While staff work is what allows researchers to conduct research, their presence in the Library of Congress is foundational to the creation of the culture at the Library. This blog is an interview with Yasmeen Khan, a paper conservator with the Library of Congress, conducted by Charlotte Giles.
