The adventures of Samak, a trickster-warrior hero of Persia’s thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, are beloved in Iran. Samak is an ayyar, a warrior who comes from the common people and embodies the ideals of loyalty, selflessness, and honor—a figure that recalls samurai, ronin, and knights yet is distinctive to Persian legend. His exploits—set against an epic background of palace intrigue, battlefield heroics, and star-crossed romance between a noble prince and princess—are as deeply rooted in Persian culture as are the stories of Robin Hood and King Arthur in the West. However, this majestic tale has remained little known outside Iran. Translated from the original Persian by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, this timeless masterwork can now be enjoyed by English-speaking readers. A thrilling and suspenseful saga, Samak the Ayyar also offers a vivid portrait of Persia a thousand years ago. Within an epic quest narrative teeming with action and supernatural forces, it sheds light on the lives of ordinary people and their social worlds. This is the first complete English-language version of a treasure of world culture. The translation is grounded in the twelfth-century Persian text while paying homage to the dynamic culture of storytelling from which it arose.

The adventures of Samak, a trickster-warrior hero of Persia's thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, are beloved in Iran. Translated from the original Persian by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, this timeless masterwork can now be enjoyed by English-speaking readers.

After the king of France and the pope massacre the Templars and steal their treasure, Martin assembles a small band of surviving Templars to retrieve the stolen treasure from under the king's nose.

An Instant National Bestseller! An Indie Next Pick! A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week | Book Bub | OverDrive | The Portalist | Publishers Weekly A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda Literary | The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HK A Best of 2021 Pick for NPR “A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence.”—NPR “A sumptuous, decadent read.”—The New York Times “Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review Immigrant. Socialite. Magician. Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Published in English for the first time, and the only Arabic epic named for a woman, The Tale of Princess Fatima recounts the thrilling adventures of a legendary medieval warrior universally known throughout the Middle East and long overdue to join world literature's pantheon of female heroes. A Penguin Classic A fearsome, sword-slinging heroine who defeated countless men in stealth attacks on horseback, Dhat al-Himma, or Princess Fatima, was secretly given away at birth because she wasn't male, only to triumph as the most formidable warrior of her time. Known alternately as "she-wolf," "woman of high resolve," and "calamity of the soul," she lives on in this rousing narrative of female empowerment, in which she leads armies of more than seventy thousand men in clashes between rival tribes and between Muslims and Christians; reconciles with her father after taking him prisoner; and fends off her infatuated cousin, who challenges her to a battle for the right to marry her. Though her cousin suffers an ignominious defeat, he impregnates Fatima against her will and, when she gives birth to a Black son, disowns his own son, who also grows up to be a great warrior, eventually avenging his mother's honor. The epic culminates in a showdown between Fatima and another formidable warrior woman, and earns Fatima a place alongside the likes of Circe, Mulan, Wonder Woman, Katniss Everdeen and other powerful women.

Die Reihe Istanbuler Texte und Studien (ITS) ist eine Buchreihe des Orient-Instituts Istanbul. Das Institut ist ein turkologisches und regional-wissenschaftliches Forschungsinstitut im Verbund der Max Weber Stiftung. In enger Kooperation mit turkischen und internationalen Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern widmet es sich einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Forschungsgebiete. Ausserdem ist das Orient-Institut Istanbul aktiv auf dem Gebiet des wissenschaftlichen Austausches zwischen Deutschland und der Turkei. Der 11. Band dieser Reihe beinhaltet: "Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ?Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World". Die Reihe Istanbuler Texte und Studien (ITS) ist eine Buchreihe des Orient-Instituts Istanbul. Das Institut ist ein turkologisches und regional-wissenschaftliches Forschungsinstitut im Verbund der Max Weber Stiftung. In enger Kooperation mit turkischen und internationalen Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern widmet es sich einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Forschungsgebiete. Ausserdem ist das Orient-Institut Istanbul aktiv auf dem Gebiet des wissenschaftlichen Austausches zwischen Deutschland und der Turkei. Der 11. Band dieser Reihe beinhaltet: "Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ?Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World".