Customer Reviews

The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings

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The translated text of the SHAHNAMEH in both the single-volume Viking edition and the three-volume Mage editions are exactly the same. The differences are that the single volume edition has a preface by Azar Nafisi, 30 black and white line art illustrations form 19th century Persian lithograph SHAHNAMEHs and a 25-page introduction by the translator. The three-volume set, on the other hand, has over 500 color illustrations from 15th to 17th-century SHAHNAMEH 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.

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.

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.

I bought this book on a recommendation from an Iranian friend of mine who told me that, if I wanted to get a more sophisticated and nuanced view of Iran than the current headlines would allow, I should read the Shahnameh. At the time I hadn't even heard of this book, which is a shame because I now know that it is on a par with the great epic poems of the world. In fact it is in some ways even more epic, as it begins with Creation and has an extremely wide perspective, spanning thousands of years and putting Iran in a global context as far back as antiquity, when the Persian Empire had dealings with Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, India, and China. Who knew that the Persians came to revere Alexander, or that Roman emperors kneeled in submission to Persian kings, that Persians had ventured far to the east, beyond what the greatest minds of ancient Greece still considered the edge of the earth? The Shahnameh also contains human tales of love and loyalty that are just as compelling, and it is fascinating to see the personalities of the Shahnameh sketched with precision and flair by Ferdowsi, the poet. My friend was right, and even though you may not learn much about Iran's modern history and political woes, learning about this rich and vibrant part of Iranian culture, its myths, legends, famous historical figures, is a first step to grasping more about a place and a people than two-minute news stories will ever tell you.

This book is a beautiful hardcover book, and the text is written in an accessible prose style.

As an earlier reviewer noted, nowhere on the cover, dustjacket, or contents is it indicated that the text on offer is an abreviated version; indeed, I had asked the Penguin sales rep at a conference if it was abridged as was told that it was not. I am a bit miffed that in fact, it is, with no indication of where or how much beyond a brief note in the translator's preface.

As the original is verse, there are no footnotes, and no bibliography for further reading, I was dissapointed to discover that the vast majority of the book is in prose. I was hoping for a text that would enable me to easily find a way into more advanced scholarship related to this epic, but have unfortunately not found this edition helpful in that regard.

If you are looking for a good read in a new epic tradition this is a good book for you; if you are hoping to research Persian folk traditions and mythology, this book is probably not the resource for which you are looking.

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.

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.

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.

The publication of this book is a landmark event in English-language Persian scholarship. It's been too long that Iran's major epic poem went unknown to readers of English because of poor, spotty, and incomplete translations. Imagine masterpieces of literature and windows on history and myth like the Iliad, Odyssey, or Mahabharata remaining inaccessible until now. And that's what the Shahnameh is-a masterful fusion of history and myth in poetic verse, and at nearly 60,000 lines, an almost unparalleled act of skill and devotion by the poem's author, Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi recounts the Iran's history beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the Arab invasion in the seventh century CE, along the way using the examples of kings, warriors, women, and everyday people, some noble, some ignominious, to recite not just history but stories of good, evil, love, lust, greed, generosity, foolishness, and wisdom. Dick Davis has completed a feat of his own in translating this epic work of poetry into beautifully clear and concise language. What should long ago have been enshrined as a classic of world literature, taught in schools and read by enthusiasts of epic poetry and history alike, is now available in the most complete translation to date, in single volume.

This prose and verse translation of the SHAHNAMEH is wonderful. The prose is smooth, the rhyming verse brilliant, and the stories are gripping. The selection is inspired. At almost 1000 pages, this is the most complete and well selected version of the SHAHNAMEH for the general reader, a translation of the full Persian text would have run to several volumes this size and, after 20 years of work, would have only been useful to scholars. The use of prose and verse follows the Persian storytelling tradition of the SHAHNAMEH and is successful in giving the reader as close a feeling of the original as is possible in a translation. Dick Davis, who is an English poet in his own right as well as a Persian scholar, has used his poetic abilities and sensibilities to great effect.