Sadegh Hedayat’s short stories are among the literary works that reflect the intellectual, cultural, and identity-related concerns of Iranian society during its encounter with modernity and the intellectual transformations that followed. From this perspective, these works possess a high potential for critical analysis. The present study, drawing on postcolonial theory, examines the ways in which Iran and the West are represented in a selection of Sadegh Hedayat’s short stories. It seeks to clarify the relationship between these representations and concepts such as identity crisis, alienation, and cultural colonialism. Postcolonial theory, with its emphasis on unequal power relations, cultural domination, and the influence of Western-centered discourses, analyzes non-Western societies in their confrontation with dominant cultures and provides an appropriate framework for the study of literary works produced in such contexts. The main objective of this research is to analyze how characters and narrative spaces respond to Western cultural influence and to explore the consequences of this influence for individual and social identity. The study also aims to demonstrate how this encounter is reflected in the form of feelings of alienation, isolation, and cultural duality within the stories. To achieve this goal, the short stories “Saye-Rowshan” , “Alaviyeh Khanom”, “Valengari”, “Se ghatreh khoon”, “Sage velgard”, and “Zende be Goor” are examined through qualitative analysis and critical textual reading. The theoretical framework of the study is based on concepts such as identity crisis, character isolation, self-colonization, othering, colonial mimicry, cultural colonialism, the East–West dichotomy, subalternity, consumerism, and the critique of intellectuals. The findings indicate that in his short stories, Hedayat portrays Iranian society as unstable and afflicted by cultural duality. Through a critical perspective, he challenges the superficial imitation of Western val