Shahnameh: The Persian Book Of Kings (Slipcase Set)

Manufacturer: Mage Publishers Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. List Price:$325.00 Our Price:$325.00 Authors: Abolqasem Ferdowsi Dick Davis Description:

Reviews:

Excellent

Had Freud known about the book of kings, his analysis of human psyche would have been enhance and could possibly have been different. I bought seven copies for gifts.
Monumental work. Good translation. Nafisi OK, within her limitations.


At least as good as the Bible
Well, I'm only about 1/8 of the way through the book, but I'm going to recommend it to you already. If it turns out the last 7/8 is bad, I'll come back and qualify my review.


Acessible, readable and wonderful
This amazing translation of the Shahnameh resulted in a book, which is accessible and readable. Thickly Davies handled to translate key passages into reimende poetry but Prosa is credited to the majority. It has some repetitious passages for avoiding to examine in order to hold the length appropriately (around 850 sides) omitted and those perseverance of the general reader. This intelligent translation followed, also, 10. Century pos accessible to form to the modern general reader.


Newest translation, great story
This is the newest translation of the famous Persian Book of Kings. Davis brings some great insight in from the original as much can be lost in translation. Love it, be aware it's very long, but a great addition to any family library or Persian buff.


Beautifully produced, but not aimed at scholarly research
This book is a beautiful expenditure book, and the text is written into an accessible Prosaart. Since a former noticed rezensent, anywhere over the cover, which dustjacket or who is contents, did not indicate it that the text on offer is abreviated version; indeed I had asked over for the Penguinverkaeufe representative at a conference, if it were shortened, as it became avowedly that it was not. I am actual a point miffed that, it am, without announcement over that or how much over a short note in the introduction of the translator outside. Since the collecting main is verse, there is no footnotes, and no bibliography for further measured value, was I dissapointed, in order to discover that the considerable majority of the book is in the Prosa. I hoped for a text, which would make possible for me to find a way into the more advanced gel honouring SAMNESS easily which was referred on this Epose, but had unfortunately this expenditure not useful in this respect found. If for you looking a good inside a new epische tradition are read, is this announce for you a good; if you hope to investigate Persian people traditions and mythology this book is probably not the aid, after which you look.


An excellent one-volume condensed Shah-Namah.
With some of the material previously published in "The Lion and the Throne", "Father and Sons", and "Sunset of Empire" all published by Mage Publishers, Dr. Dick Davis has added some more of his translations and has crafted and compiled a very readable and compact version of the Shah-Namah in his latest publication: Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings.

The Shah-Namah is the National Epic of Persia/Iran, composed by the poet Abulqasim Firdausi in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The current standard edition of the poem which runs into nine volumes (roughly 300 pages per volume), includes over 50,000 lines. In its great length, and it's multiplicity of characters and generations, as well as in other significant ways, the Shah-Namah comes closer to the Indian Epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, than to say the Illiad, the Odyssey or the Aeneid of the western world.

According to history, Sultan Muhammad Ghaznavi commissioned Firdausi to compose the Shah-Namah, promising to pay the poet a gold coin for every line. The King does not fulfill his promise. Instead he sends the poet silver coins, which Firdausi despite his dire poverty refuses. The King finally realizing the worth of the poet, repents of his behaviour and travels to the city of Tus to console the poet. He is too late, as his procession enters the main gate of the city, it encounters another procession leaving the same gate, with Firdausi's coffin. While political power is temporal, history and literature are eternal. We remember the King, because we remember the Poet.

GIven the poem's immense length and repititions, some passages have inevitably been omitted and others presented in a summary form. The most substantial ommission is the episode of the "twelve champions" which occurs during the Kaikhushru's war against Turan. Variant editions of the Firdausi's text have been used in working on this translation, for justifiable reasons. The illustrations used in this edition are taken from the lithographs for popular nineteenth-century editions of the poem of Dr. Ulrich Marzolph.

The book is very readable with meticulous English and well framed sentences. The books ends with a sumptuous glossary of names. Every Parsi and Zarathushtrian the world over, who may want to know a little of their past heritage, should give this book their undivided attention.


A Universe in Under a Thousand Pages
Shahnameh is a poetic form rarely appreciated. It's an epic, it's storytelling, it's history, politics, myth, and religion. Ironically it stands as a stark counterpoint to today's poetic ethos of word economy, in which modern poets can sum up a universe in a hundred words.
Shahnameh stands, as translated here, at over 850 pages, possibly the longest poem ever created. Dick Davis' translation seems lacking in the ornamental nature of poetic language, and possibly the Persian language, but is likely true to the original's context. He does grace his prosaic pages occasionally with delightful quatrains to remind us that this is poetry, that its origins belong to the oral tradition, that it once beguiled as song.
Few will read this tome to completion, and that's a shame in a time in which we in the west need a better understanding of what was once one of the planet's most ascendant cultures, one that has influenced ours in more ways than we probably care to imagine.


In Answer to Previous Reviewer's Question about the Two Editions
The translated text of the SHAHNAMEH in the Einzelbandviking expenditure and in the three-volumes Mage expenditures are exactly the same. The differences are that the individual expenditure for volume has an introduction by Azar Nafisi, 30 black and white line art illustrations form Persian lithography SHAHNAMEHs 19. Century and an introduction 25-page by the translator. The three-volumes sentence has on the other hand over 500 color illustrations of 15. 17th-century SHAHNAMEH to the manuscripts, an introduction for each volume by the translator, and volume 1 (the LION AND the THRONE) includes a summary by the translator of the complete SHAHNAMEH.


question
Does someone know, if this text is the same as that of the three-volume "stories of the Shahnameh" also by Davis however minus the illustrations, or it does not contain additional material in those three volumes (are excellent)?


I can finally read the stories of my childhood
I was born in the US to Iranian parents, so I grew up listening to the stories from the Shahnameh, told to me in Persian by my parents and grandparents. But since I couldn't read the stories in the original Persian, I was never able to pick up a book and follow the stories from start to finish, or really put them in context. When I heard that the Shahnameh was finally available in English I rushed to get a copy. And all the stories and characters I'd learned in childhood are here! The legends of Zal, Rostam, Sohrab, Eskandar, Bahram, Mazdak, Khosrow, and Anoushirvan, and even more that I never knew were part of the Shahnameh. Reading this book as an adult, I can see the Shahnameh not just as fable but what it really is: an epic poem, a mix of myth and history, and a still-living story of a people. Dick Davis is a genius for having translated this incredibly long poem so evenly and clearly. The drama, humor, and pathos of Ferdowsi is never lost in his translation. Reading this book, there is still the sense of excitement and of having gained some kind of wisdom as when I first heard the stories of the Shahnameh as a child.


A Breakthrough for Ferdowsi in English
I am surprised at the reviews that mention only what is not in this edition of the Shahnameh, at the expense of what is in the book. It is well that it is not a complete, unabridged translation; the Shahnameh is one of the longest epic poems in the world, and a complete translation (which would always be a contentious claim) would run over a thousand pages. This edition is well-selected and wonderfully accessible for the modern reader of English, and contains in full most of the greatest narratives of the epic, from their beginnings to their conclusions. Dick Davis' translation into beautiful and sensitive English verse and prose is a breakthrough for Ferdowsi in the non-Persian-speaking world.


Abbreviated
As a non-Persian speaker who had never before had access to the Shahnameh, I was very excited to see this new English translation at an affordable price.
Most of the stories from the original are included, but the fact that this is an abridged version is not revealed on the dust jacket flaps and if it had been, I doubt I would have bought it. The amount of the poem that is abridged is only discussed very late in the translator's introduction and he states that he omits parts to make it "accessible to the general reader". Quite an insult to the "general reader's" intelligence, I think.



Great Perpective on Iranian History and Folklife
I bought me this book on a recommendation of an Iranian friend of me, that, if I wanted to receive a highly developdeveloped and opinion from Iran nuanced, when the present headlines would grant, I should the Shahnameh read explained. To the time as I had belonged not even of this book, which is a dishonor, because I know now that she is on an equality with the large epischen poems of the world. It is somehow even more epischer actually, since it begins with creation and an extremely broad perspective has, thousands years spanned and as far Iran into a global back of the context as antiquity inserts, when the Persian realm handling Alexander the large, Roman emperors, which had India and the porcelain. Who knew that the Perser came to revere Alexander or that Roman emperors in the subordination knelt to the Persian kings, who had risked Perser far to the east, beyond which the largest understanding of old Greece still the edge of the mass regarded? The Shahnameh contains also human stories, of the love and loyalty, which is fair as compelling, and it is fascinating to see the procurementnesses of the Shahnameh outlined with precision and feeling of Ferdowsi, the poet. My friend was quite and although you can learn not much over of Iran modern history and political miserable ones, over this rich learning and part Iranian culture, its myths, vibrant legends, famous historical illustrations, is a first step for seizing more over a place and people, than two-minute messages stories at all explain to you.


A Landmark Translation
The publication of this book is a case of boundary stone in the English-language Persian gel honouring SAMNESS. It is too long that of Iran went episches main poem unknown to the readers from English because of the bad, spotty and to incomplete translations. Imagine masterpieces of the literature and the windows on history and myth like the remaining the inaccessible Ilias, the odyssey or Mahabharata up to now. And that is, which the Shahnameh masterful fusion procedure of history and myth in the poetic verse actualin and at nearly 60,000 lines, at a nearly incomparable act of the ability and at the devotion by the author of the poem, Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi recounts the history of Iran, those with the creation of the world begins and with the Arab invasion in 7. Century CERIUM, along which way with the examples of the kings, which krieger, who recite women and the daily people, any noble, any disgraceful, to not fair history however to stories by good, terminated by bad, love, sense desire, having craze, generosity, stupidity and intelligence. Thickly Davis accomplished a masterpiece of its, if he translated this epische work beautifully of poetry into free and short language. Which as classical authors of the world literature before long time included its, into whom schools informed its and of the enthusiasts of the epischen poetry and history should have been directly read, is now in the komplettesten translation up to now, in the individual volume available.


Wow! What a Journey
I started reading this book 4 days ago and I have just finished it. During this time I read, I drank, I cried, I laughed, I read some more. I ate, I drank and I kept on reading-I only stopped to sleep, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to continue reading. Whoever said, "To know what it means to be an Iranian, read the SHAHNAMEH" was right. It was an incredible journey through the legends of the Iranian peoples from time immemorial. And what a brilliant translation, and how inspired to combine prose and verse in English, as did a storyteller, naqqal, in Persian when I heard him more than 30 years ago in Esfahan reciting the SHAHNAMEH in his, sometimes sing-song, sometimes booming voice and unfurling his images of the Persian hero Rostam and his son Sohrab. There are some wonderful illustrations in this book too. Even though I can read Persian, and though there is a little something lost in translation (as always), there is also much gained in reading the SHAHNAMEH in this English edition. Unless you are a scholar of the SHAHNAMEH it is hard to read it smoothly, especially the first time round and even harder to get through all 9 volumes of it. The advantage of this translation is that it makes it easy and enjoyable-an entertainment, which is what it was always meant to be. Amazingly, the translation is also very close to the original-the verse can almost be used as a crib. What's more, the major stories of the SHAHNAMEH have been well selected and smoothly linked. For the first time in translation, Ferdowsi's philosophy of justice, love and humanity comes through-he wrote the SHAHNAMEH not as a book of battles, but rather as a book about justice and the human condition. Bravo Dick Davis! Chapeau (my hat off to you) as the French say, or mokhlesetam (I have become your mindless one), as the Persians say.


A Wonderful Shahnameh in English Prose and Verse
This pro SA and verse translation of the SHAHNAMEH are wonderful. The Prosa is smooth, the reimende bright verse, and stories are moving. The allotters one spurs. At nearly 1000 sides this is only useful the kompletteste and well preselected version of the SHAHNAMEH for the general reader, a translation of the full Persian text to run would have left to some volumes this size and, after 20 years work, would have been a scholar. The use of Prosa and verse follows the Persian storytelling tradition of the SHAHNAMEH and is successful, if it in such a way gives near the reader a feeling to the collecting main, how is possible in a translation. Thickly Davis, which is an English poet in its own right as well as a Persian scholar, used its poetic abilities and sensitivities for the large effect.


THIS IS NOT THE FULL TEXT
Before anyone becomes excited that the Shahnameh has finally been made available - don't. It hasn't. This text is not noted as being abridged because it isn't, technically. Instead large swaths of untold length have been summarized in a paragraph or two as, according to the translator, he found them of lesser importance and gosh, the poem is really long. (Actually, the review does say, "most complete version available" or something like that. This apparently is meant to be read as 'translator's selection'.)
I myself am no great scholar of Persian texts so I will leave a review of what has been included in the text to someone more familiar with the Shahnameh's various versions than myself. My two stars are because I felt like there was no fair warning that this was an abbreviated version.



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