New books

Two new titles have been published recently:

Rubá’iyát of Hakim ‘Umar Khayyám. Selected quatrains of Khayyám. Translated into simple Solati Cover 2015English with spiritual interpretation. Edited and translated by Bahman Solati. Boca Raton, Universal-publishers, 2015. 109 pp. ISBN: 978-1-62734-033-5.

In this edition 60 quatrains are literally translated and presented with a spiritual explanation and with the Persian text of the quatrains. The introduction (20 pages) highlights the most important facts, features and history of Khayyám’s rubáiyat. Solati published a number of studies on Hafez, as well as on the impact of Sufism on post-Islamic Persian literature.

The 108 quatrains of Omar Khayyam. Persian – English – Chinese. [Selection and translation] Sen Du 108 quatrainsDu. Litfire Publishing, 2015. 148 pp. ISBN: 978-1-942296-75-1.

This is a somewhat remarkble edition, as it not only presents the quatrains in English, Persian and Chinese, the verses are also classified by subject matter in ten sections. Each quatrain has a title and for each one a rhyme pattern is given for the Persian text. These patterns are collated in a table at the end of the book. The Introduction and the Notes are partially in English and Chinese, whereas the Notes are composed from ‘copy-pasted’ fragments from various older editions and studies, which results in a somewhat cluttered impression. To fully enjoy this edition the reader needs to understand the Chinese language.

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