Father and Sons

Firdawsei

ISBN 10: 0934211531 / ISBN 13: 9780934211536

Published by MAGE PUBL INC, 2002

About this Item

KlappentextrnrnAmong the masterpieces of world literature, one of the least familiar to English readers is the Persian Book of Kings (Shahnameh in Persian). Composed 1,000 years ago, this prodigious national epic is a 60,000 couplet verse poem, .

Seller Inventory # 595142286

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Father and Sons
• Publisher: MAGE PUBL INC
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0934211531
• ISBN 13: 9780934211536
• Binding: Gebunden
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Volume 2 opens and closes with tales of tragic conflict between a king and his son: Prince Seyavash and Prince Esfandiyar are both driven from the court by their foolish fathers to confront destiny and death in distant lands. Interwoven with Seyavash's story is the tale of his stepmother Sudabeh's lust for her young stepson, and of his escape from her tricks by the famous trial by fire; Esfandiyar's story involves the last combat of the great Rostam, a fight to the death which leads to Rostam's own demise at the hands of his evil brother Shaghad. Between these two stories the reader travels through a wondrous landscape of romance, demons, heroic despair and mystical renunciation of the world.

About the Author

FERDOWSI was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus, in 940. His great epic the Shahnameh, to which he devoted most of his adult life, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan, who were the chief instigators of the revival of Persian cultural traditions after the Arab conquest of the seventh century. During Ferdowsi's lifetime this dynasty was conquered by the Ghaznavid Turks, and there are various stories in medieval texts describing the lack of interest shown by the new ruler of Khorasan, Mahmud of Ghazni, in Ferdowsi and his lifework. Ferdowsi is said to have died around 1020 in poverty and embittered by royal neglect, though confident of his and his poem's ultimate fame.

DICK DAVIS was born to English and Italian parents in 1945 and educated at King's College, Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature). In 1970 while pursuing a career in poetry and literature and teaching in Greece he visited a friend in Iran. While there, he fell ill and was nursed to health by a Persian woman, whom he eventually married. Davis fell in love with the country as well, and stayed for eight years, learning Persian and teaching at the University of Tehran. After the revolution in 1979 the Davis family returned to England where he pursued his love of the Persian language, earning his Ph.D. in Medieval Persian Literature from the University of Manchester.

Since then, he has emerged as the foremost translator of Persian as well as having published numerous volumes of his own poetry to critical acclaim, including: Touchwood, A New Kind of Love, Devices and Desires, and Covenant. He is currently professor of Persian at Ohio State University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His other translations from Persian include the forthcoming Fathers and Sons: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, Vol. II (Mage, 1999), Borrowed Ware (Mage, 1997), My Uncle Napoleon (Mage, 1996), The Legend of Seyavash (Penguin Classics, 1992), and with Afkham Darbandi, The Conference of the Birds (Penguin Classics, 1984). He has also written a groundbreaking analysis of the Shahnameh, Epic and Sedition.