Investigating the nature of "evil" in a novel by Belqis Soleimani based on the views of Daryl Koehn

Belqis Soleimani's novel "Seed of Evil" is one of the distinctive works of contemporary Persian fiction, in which the author has tried to address the subject of "evil" as a controversial and serious concept through a compelling story full of various sub-narratives. Throughout the novel, the reader is repeatedly confronted with the concept of evil from various philosophical, theological, and moral perspectives to its slang and even lexical conceptions, and This raises the question of what kind of "evil" the author means. In this article, an attempt has been made to investigate the issue of "evil" in the mentioned novel by descriptive-analytical method and using the theoretical foundations mentioned by Daryl Koehn. Criticizing the views of ethicists and rationalists on the conscious and deliberate nature of "evil," Koehn considers the origin of evil to be unconscious processes that have nothing to do with the conscious choice of persons. Among the characters in the novel "Evil Seed", "Sohrab" is most related to the issue of "evil". A bored, narcissistic, ungrateful, miserable and ostentatious character who sacrifices his life and youth and his wife "Mahrokh" for his inner evil. The results of examining the actions and thoughts of this character based on Koehn's teachings show that boredom arising from alienation and obsession to attract the attention and approval of others are the main origins of "evil" in this character. Unconscious processes that turn Sohrab into an actor who spends his whole life playing in favorite roles and being approved by others.