In the last years of his life he produced two major works...

In the last years of his life he produced two major works: the novel, Nafrin-e zamin (The curse of the land), published in 1967, a damaging criticism of the so-called Land Reform; and a work of ideological importance, Dar khidmat wa khiyanat-e rawshanfikran (Concerning the service and disservice of the intellectuals), which was posthumously published during the peak hours of the Revolution.

Jalal died on September 9, 1969 in a village in Gilan, and was buried near the Fir'zabadi mosque at Shahri Ray. Thus came to end an intellectual career, apparently chequered with swift shifts in political and philosophical position, but in reality depicting the journey of a restless soul in search of its true identity, a quest for the roots.

Jalal's psychological and intellectual biography is not different from those of many others who underwent similar radical upheavals and transformations in the post-Second-World-War period of disillusionment with almost all the modern ideologies causing a deep sense of rootlessness. Jalal traced back the roots of his own existence along with the roots of Iranian culture and soul to Islam-a diagnosis of great relevance to the Muslim world in general.

Hamid Algar's introduction to the translation of Gharbzadegi furnishes all necessary information about Jalal's literary and political life. Algar's following observation provides the key to understanding the real nature of Occidentosis: It is important to remember that its author was neither a historian nor an ideologue.

He was a man who after two decades of thought and experimentation had discovered an important and fundamental truth concerning his society-disastrous subordination to the West in all areas-and was in a hurry to communicate this discovery to others. He had neither the time nor the patience to engage in careful historical research, and at some points in the book he even enjoins his readers to dig up the historical evidence for a given assertion. (p. 14).

A more important observation made by Algar concerns the nature of Jalal's rediscovery of the soul of Islam.