A Commentary on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, with a New Translation. The Other Persian Garden. Nicholas Gayle.  Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2026. ISBN: 978-1-0364-7201-6.

For generations FitzGerald’s lyrical and exotic versions of the Persian poetry of Omar Khayyam—the Rubaiyat—have provided some of the best-loved and most quoted lines in English verse, yet he left 114 poems in his source manuscript untouched. What of these poems? Here they are, not just newly minted in English verse, but accompanied by a detailed Commentary examining the various historical, social, and religious issues the poems throw up, one addressed to both academics and general readers alike. It turns out that through its exploration of mystical and sensual love, of human hope, doubt, and psychological resignation, the world of medieval Persian poetry can offer an oblique mirror to remind us we have never been modern.