Obeyd-e Zakani, who died in 1372 is among the great poets of Iran but little known in the West. This selection of his work is the first to be translated into English. Obeyd was a remarkable satirist and social critic who looked upon his world of extravagant indulgence and corruption with the censorious eyes of a Juvenal, and portrayed it with the cynicism and wit of a Voltaire, and the hilarious grotesqueness of a Rabelais. He used scathing stories and sardonic maxims to paint a world full of deceit, greed, lust, sycophancy, and perversion, where old values and virtues were scorned and extremes of wealth and poverty, violence and bloodshed were the order of the day.

"Obeyd-e Zakani, who died in 1372 is among the great poets of Iran but little known in the West. This selection of his work is the first to be translated into English. Obeyd was a remarkable satirist and social critic who looked upon his world of extravagant indulgence and corruption with the censorious eyes of a Juvenal, and portrayed it with the cynicism and wit of a Voltaire, and the hilarious grotesqueness of a Rabelais. He used scathing stories and sardonic maxims to paint a world full of deceit, greed, lust, sycophancy, and perversion, where old values and virtues were scorned and extremes of wealth and poverty, violence and bloodshed were the order of the day." -- from publishers.

A fourteenth-century Persian political satire about a cat named Gorby who preys on rats, leading to a battle that ends first in defeat, then in victory for Gorby

In the fourteenth-century Persian city of Shiraz, poets composed, scholars studied, mystics sought hidden truths, ascetics prayed and fasted, drunkards brawled, and princes and their courtiers played deadly games of power. This was the world of Shams al-Din Mohammad Hafez Shirazi, a classical poet who remains broadly popular today in his native Shiraz and in modern Iran as a whole, and among all lovers of great verse traditions. As John Limbert notes, Hafez's poetry is inseparable from the Iranian spirit--a reflection of Iranians’ intellectual and emotional responses to events. But if Hafez’s endurance derives from the considerable charm of his work, it also arises from his sure grounding in the life of his day, from a setting so deftly explored by his verse that his depictions of it retain a timeless relevance. To fully comprehend and enjoy Hafez, and thus to understand a root force in modern Iranian consciousness, we must know something of the city in which he lived and wrote. In this book, Limbert provides not only a rich context for Hafez’s poetry but also a comprehensive perspective on a fascinating place in a dynamic time. His portrait of this elegant, witty poet and his marvelous city will be as valuable to medievalists, students of the Middle East, and specialists in urban studies as it will be to connoisseurs of world literature.

FABLES & OTHER POEMS Parvin E'tesami Translation & Introduction Paul Smith Parvin E'tesami (1907-1941) was one of Iran's greatest female poets. She left Tabriz for Tehran with her family in 1912 and then lived in Tehran. She learned Arabic and Persian literature from her father, a well-known literary figure. She composed her first poems in the classical style at eight and knew most Iranian poets by the time she was eleven, having a remarkable memory. She passed high school and taught for two years and was then a librarian in Tehran University. She refused to work in the royal court. Her first collection of poems was published in 1935 and she received a Medal of Art and Culture in 1936. Her poems had mainly social or mystical subjects, often being about the tyranny of the rich and the rights of the poor and the downtrodden and the role of women. She married in 1934 and divorced two months later. She died in 1941 from Typhoid fever in Tehran and was buried in Qom. The first edition of her Divan of 156 poems appeared in 1935... masnavis, qasidas, ghazals, qit'as, musammats. In her short life she achieved much fame among Iranians. This is the largest English selection her poetic fables and other poems poems translated in the correct form. Introduction on her Life, Times & Poetry & the Forms in which she wrote. Selected Bibliography. Large Print (16pt) & Large Format Paperback (8" x 10") Pages 429. Paul Smith is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi & other poets of the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages... including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Iqbal, Ghalib, Makhfi, Lalla Ded, Nazir and many others and his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books and a dozen screenplays. amazon.com/author/smithpa