Download or read book Shahnameh written by Abolqasem Ferdowsi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 1041 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran—now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition A Penguin Classic Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern readers. Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the tenth century, the Shahnameh is among the greatest works of world literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Persia, from the mythical creation of the world and the dawn of Persian civilization through the seventh-century Arab conquest. The stories of the Shahnameh are deeply embedded in Persian culture and beyond, as attested by their appearance in such works as The Kite Runner and the love poems of Rumi and Hafez. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Download or read book A Persian Requiem written by Sīmīn Dānishvar and published by Halban Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the last years of World War II with the British army in occupation, the novel chronicles the life of Zari, a traditional, anxious, and superstitious woman whose husband, Yusef is an idealistic feudal landlord. A web of political intrigue and hostility is created. In the background, tribal leaders are in open rebellion against the government and British occupation. In the midst of this turbulence Zari carries on normal life within the beautiful courtyard of her house, attempting to keep the family safe from external events. The corruption engendered by occupation is pervasive as Zari's family life is shattered and disaster strikes. An immensely moving story, the novel is a powerful indictment of colonization."

Download or read book Savushun written by Sīmīn Dānishvar and published by Washington, D.C. : Mage Publishers. This book was released on 1990 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A very engaging saga...'Washington Post Book World?A powerfully resonant work...'Publishers Weekly?Outstanding foreign fiction...'USA TodaySavushun (pronounced ?sa-voo-shoon?) is a folk tradition, surviving in Southern Iran from an undateable pre-islamic past, that conjures hope in spite of everything.The novel chronicles the life of a Persian family during the World War II Allied occupation of Iran. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-islamic monuments, the great Persian poets, the shrines, sufis and nomadic tribes all within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers, corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority. The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife, and mother, who copes with her idealistic husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for an individual identity.simin daneshvar lives and continues to write in Iran.

Download or read book The Persian Bride written by James Buchan and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as a masterpiece in Britain, this epic novel is at once a great love story, a riveting political thriller, and a profound analysis of modern Iran. A couple falls desperately in love, marry in secret, and are forced into hiding as the old world disintegrates in revolution and terror.

Download or read book The Colonel written by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize Longlististed for the Man Asian Literary Prize A new novel by the master of Iranian letters that directly engages politics in Iran today Ten years in the writing, this fearless novel—so powerful it’s banned in Iran—tells the stirring story of a tortured people forced to live under successive oppressive regimes. It begins on a pitch black, rainy night, when there’s a knock on the Colonel’s door. Two policemen have come to summon him to collect the tortured body of his youngest daughter. The Islamic Revolution is devouring its own children. Set over the course of a single night, the novel follows the Colonel as he pays a bribe to recover his daughter’s body and then races to bury her before sunrise. As we watch him struggle with the death of his innocent child, we find him wracked with guilt and anger over the condition of his country, particularly as represented by his own children: a son who fell during the 1979 revolution; another driven to madness after being tortured during the Shah’s regime; a third who went off to martyr himself fighting for the ayatollahs in their war against Iraq; one murdered daughter, and another who survives by being married to a cruel opportunist. An incredibly powerful novel about nation, history and family, The Colonel is a startling illumination of the consequences of years of oppression and political upheaval in Iran.

Download or read book Her Eyes written by Buzurg ʻAlavī and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Her Eyes was originally published in 1952 and is recognized by many scholars as Bozorg Alavi's finest novel. Alavi, a leading contemporary Persian writer and a champion of the Left, is well known for his political activism, which led to his imprisonment in Iran under the regime of Reza Shah. Her Eyes is the story of Farangis, a member of the Iranian upper class whose life of leisure has left her without employable skills. Despairing, she enrolls in a Parisian art school, only to discover that she is severely lacking as a painter. She returns to Iran to participate in the political activities of Ostad Makan, Iran's greatest painter. This most popular of Alavi's novels, translated into English for the first time, presents a realistic picture of 20th-century Iran in the throes of rapid, forced modernization. Co-published with the Persian Heritage Foundation.

Download or read book The Persian Boy written by Mary Renault and published by Virago. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One of the greatest historical novels ever written' SARAH WATERS 'I love to find queer representation in historical fiction. . . Renault's eye for intimacy is amazing' DOUGLAS STUART 'Fierce, complex and eloquent' MADELINE MILLER 'Mary Renault is a shining light' HILARY MANTEL *** A groundbreaking queer classic and powerful reimagining of the last years of Alexander the Great, told through the eyes of his lover. I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a king. And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it. Bagoas, abducted as a boy and sold as a eunuch, has been transported to the heart of the Persian court as courtesan to King Darius. But when the Macedon army conquers his homeland, Bagoas finds freedom at the hands of their golden young commander, whose name is already becoming a legend: Alexander. Their encounter sparks a passionate devotion that shapes the Persian boy's future - and deepens into a relationship that will sustain them both through assassination plots, political intrigue and the threat of Alexander's own restless ambition. This is a spellbinding tale of power, loyalty and loss - a vision of history transfigured by love. 'Nowhere else in fiction have Alexander's beauty and charisma blazed with such potency' TOM HOLLAND 'Passionate and captivating' SEÁN HEWITT 'All my sense of the ancient world - its value, its style, the scent of its wars and passions - comes from Mary Renault' EMMA DONOGHUE 'The Alexander Trilogy stands as one of the most important works of fiction in the 20th century' ANTONIA SENIOR, THE TIMES

Download or read book Shahnameh written by Elizabeth Laird and published by Lincoln Children's Books. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shahnameh is a collection of stories and myths from ancient Iran, filled with kings, heroes, princesses, magical animals and demons. Written as an epic poem by the poet Ferdowsi in the 10th century, it is one of the great classics of Persian literature. The tales include the Simurgh, the giant bird who brings up an orphaned king in her nest on a craggy rock, wicked King Zahhak with his man-eating snakes, and above all the story of the great hero Rustam and his son Sohrab.Elizabeth Laird is passionate about bringing this great epic poem to the children of western cultures, as well as retelling it for Iranian children living in the West.

Download or read book The Shahnameh written by Ferdowsi and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immerse yourself in the distant past with this epic poem from the Persian tradition. Penned more than one thousand years ago by the famed poet Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh weaves history and myth into a lyrical, action-packed work of art that you won't be able to put down. This book is a must-read for folklore connoisseurs.

Download or read book My Uncle Napoleon written by Iraj Pezeshkzad and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most beloved Iranian novel of the twentieth century “God forbid, I’ve fallen in love with Layli!” So begins the farce of our narrator’s life, one spent in a large extended Iranian family lorded over by the blustering, paranoid patriarch, Dear Uncle Napoleon. When Uncle Napoleon’s least-favorite nephew falls for his daughter, Layli, family fortunes are reversed, feuds fired up and resolved, and assignations attempted and thwarted. First published in Iran in the 1970s and adapted into a hugely successful television series, this beloved novel is now “Suggested Reading” in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. My Uncle Napoleon is a timeless and universal satire of first love and family intrigue.

Download or read book Shahnameh written by Firdawsī and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great national epic of Persiathe most complete English-language edition Wherever Persian influence has spread, the stories of the "Shahnameh" become deeply embedded in the culture, as their appearance in such novels as "The Kite Runner" amply attests. Among the greatest works of world literature, this prodigious narrative, composed by the poet Ferdowsi in the late tenth century, tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century. The sweep and psychological depth of the "Shahnameh" is nothing less than magnificent. Now one of the greatest translators of Persian poetry, Dick Davis, presents Ferdowsis masterpiece in an elegant combination of prose and verse.

Download or read book My Father s Notebook written by Kader Abdolah and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he was a boy, Aga Akbar, the deaf-mute illegitimate son of a Persian nobleman, traveled with his uncle to a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain. Once there, he was to copy a three-thousand-year-old cuneiform inscription—an order of the first king of Persia—as a means of freeing himself from his emotional confinement. For the remainder of his life, Aga Akbar used these cuneiform characters to fill a notebook with writings only he could understand. Years later, his son, Ishmael—a political dissident in exile—is attempting to translate the notebook . . . and in the process tells his father's story, his own, and the story of twentieth-century Iran. A stunning and ambitious novel by a singular literary talent, My Father's Notebook is at once a masterful chronicle of a culture's troubled voyage into modernity and the poignant, timeless tale of a son's enduring love.

Download or read book Blind Owl written by Sadeq Hedayat and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new English translation of one of the most important, controversial Iranian novels of the twentieth century Winner of the 2023 Lois Roth Persian Translation Award A Penguin Classic Written by one of the greatest Iranian writers of the twentieth century, Blind Owl tells a two-part story of an isolated narrator with a fragile relationship with time and reality. In first person, the narrator offers a string of hazy, dreamlike recollections fueled by opium and alcohol. He spends time painting the exact same scene on the covers of pen cases: an old man wearing a cape and turban sitting under a cypress tree, separated by a small stream from a beautiful woman in black who offers him a water lily. In a one-page transition, the reader finds the narrator covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrest him. In part two, readers glimpse the grim realities that unlock the mysteries of the first part. In a new translation that reflects Hedayat’s conversational, confessional tone, Blind Owl joins the ranks of classics by Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky that explore the dark recesses of the human psyche.

Download or read book Fortress of the Golden Dragon written by Homa A. Garemani and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This spellbinding story is inspired by the tenthcentury Iranian epic, the ShahNameh (Book of Kings), the crown jewel of Iranian literature. It's the tale of a poor maiden named Allusin who discovers a magical worm that enables her to weave so prodigiously that she brings great wealth and prestige to her family. As the worm grows in size, so does the quiet village of Kolallan, and the wealth of its people. Under the watchful eye of the legendary master, Peerbabu, the story unfolds, as the maiden becomes a captive and a victim of the greed of her father. The worm turns into a threeheaded dragon, and the town becomes a fortress, as it falls under the spell of an evil priest who desires only power and money. Only the young warrior prince, Allusin's great love, can break the spell. Anyone who loves the magical realism and the mystical writing of the Persian poet Rumi will be enchanted by Fortress of the Golden Dragon. A classic, powerful tale of the everlasting battle between the powers of light and the forces of darkness, this fastpaced novel will inspire all who read it. Homa Garemani, a poet and translator, was born and raised in Iran. She has previously published translations of mystical works such as the Tao Te Ching from English into Farsi. She is a graduate of the University of Tehran, and lives in Los Angeles.

Download or read book The King written by Kader Abdolah and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Longlisted for the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award* Once upon a time there was a Persian prince. The prince had many brothers, for his father had married over a thousand wives, but Prince Naser alone stood to inherit the kingdom. As the prince ascends to the throne we lurk in his shadow to overhear the whispered intrigues and plotting of bloody battles. The weight of the nation bears heavily on Shah Naser's shoulders. Will this young king triumph or will he succumb to the forces that threaten to engulf him? Enter the court of the King of Persia . . .

Download or read book Persian Nights written by Diane Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-02-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny, incisive, frightening and eminently skillful."—New York Times The year is 1978, the tumultuous period leading up to the Iranian Revolution. While visiting Iran with her husband, Chloe Fowler is left to travel alone after he is summoned home. Much to her surprise, she finds herself drawn to the country, intoxicated by each unfamiliar sight that reminds her how far from home she really is, both comforted and unsettled by the group of foreign and Iranian physicians and their wives who take her in. However, her exhilaration crashes when odd, often frightening events begin to occur, exposing the darker side of this "colonial life." Chloe is about to be liberated from everything she has ever known—in a place where her ordinary notions of reason and reality will run headlong into a wall of intrigue, and where every idea she has about herself will be put to the test. Persian Nights follows Chloe on a voyage through the seductively inexplicable, and has all the qualities one expects from the gifted author of Le Divorce—the quirky, vivid atmosphere; the intelligent, humane voice; the compelling narrative. Once again, Diane Johnson delivers an entertaining novel of an appealing woman caught up in a mysterious world of change and intrigue.

Download or read book Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings written by Olga M. Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A masterpiece of Persian Classical epic, the Shahnama or Book of Kings was composed by Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi at the beginning of the eleventh century. Because the Shahnama presents itself as a chronicle of the reigns of the shahs from the primordial founders to the Sasanian dynasty which ended in 651, scholarly attention has centered on the question of its historical accuracy. Addressing the literary as well as the historical and mythological aspects of the Shahnama, Olga M. Davidson makes this centerpiece of Iranian culture accessible to Western readers." "Drawing on recent work in epic studies and oral poetics, Davidson considers analogies with Classical and medieval European narratives as she investigates the poem's social contexts. Her interpretation of the Shahnama focuses on both the figure of the poet himself and on his protagonists - the superhuman hero Rostam and the historical or historicized shahs. Exploring the Shahnama as an example, Davidson identifies as a driving force of Ferdowsi's narrative a strong current of antagonism between king and hero. Ironically, she shows, it is the epic hero himself who poses the greatest threat to the concept of kingship that he is sworn to defend." "Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings enhances our understanding of the relationship between myth and epic. It will be welcomed by readers working in such fields as comparative literature, Middle Eastern Studies, folklore, literary theory, and comparative religion."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved