Middle Eastern Literature

This fresh prose translation of 105 short teaching stories by Rumi, which form the core of the six-volume Masnavi, explores the hidden spiritual aspects of everyday experience. Rumi transforms the seemingly mundane events of daily life into profound Sufi teaching moments. These prose gems open the mystical portal to the world of the ancient mystic.

This masterful translation brings legendary heroes, tragic destinies, sweeping romances, colossal monsters, and fearless warriors vividly to life, unfolding a mythic saga that spans thousands of years. Originally composed as an 11th-century epic poem, Shahnameh endures as one of the world’s greatest masterpieces of mythology and storytelling. Performed by award-winning voice actor Marc Thompson and enriched with evocative sound design by Hamid Rahmanian, creator of the Shahnameh Project, this theatrical audiobook is truly cinema for the ear.

Dating back to around 2400 BCE, this profound collection of teachings from the vizier Ptahhotep offers invaluable insights on ethics, leadership, family life, and personal conduct. Often hailed as one of the earliest surviving works of literature, these maxims provide a blueprint for living a balanced, honorable life—lessons that resonate just as powerfully today as they did in the courts of the pharaohs. From advice on humility and justice to the art of wise speech and self-control, Ptahhotep’s words guide listeners toward moral excellence and practical success.

كنت أجلس إلى صندوق الدنيا وأنظر ما فيه، فصرت أحمله على ظهري وأجوب به الدنيا، أجمع مناظرها وصور العيش فيها عسى أن يستوقفني أطفال الحياة الكبار، فأحط الدكة وأضع الصندوق على قوائمه، وأدعوهم أن ينظروا ويعجبوا ويتسلوا ... وكما أن »صندوق الدنيا« القديم كان هو بريد »الفانوس السحري« وشريط »السينما« وطليعتهما، أرجو أن يقسم لصندوقي هذاأن يكون—فى عالم الأدب—تمهيدا لما هو أقوى وأتم وأحفل.

The Last Prophet is a novel based on the extraordinary life of the prophet Muhammad, one-time shepherd and outcast revolutionary. This desert master’s discipline and principles would later become the basis for Islam, which today claims two billion followers.

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

The prophet Al Mustafa has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship that will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Ahmad Mahmoud sets The Neighbors against the backdrop of the oil nationalization crisis that gripped Iran in the early 1950s. His protagonist, Khaled, a young man from a rundown neighborhood in Ahvaz, a city in southern Iran, becomes involved in the struggle to wrest Iran’s oil industry from the British and, as the result of his political activities, comes to realize that there is more to life than the drudgery and poverty his parents and neighbors have experienced. The Neighbors, published in 1974, cemented Mahmoud’s reputation as a novelist and captured the ethos of a generation--the ...

Almustafa, the chosen and beloved, must leave the port of Orphalese upon the ship he has waited upon for 12 years. As he descends to the waterfront, the people of Orphalese gather to question him and hear his wisdom on important topics of their daily lives. Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece is a series of enlightening, philosophical answers to those questions. The inspirational and spiritual words of The Prophet, written in an almost Biblical, poetic style, reveal deep insights into each of the subjects in question.

He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus' classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: He gives his brother a story and a name - Musa - and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.

Almustafa, the prophet of Orphalese, awakes to the fulfillment of his 12-year wish: the arrival of his ship to take him home. Suddenly, he and the rest of the inhabitants are faced with his imminent departure. With the assistance of the seer Almitra, he is first set upon an unexpected course of disclosing his perspectives on life to the inhabitants of Orphalese; a process that holds new insights and realizations even for Almustafa, himself.

Ventura, una hermosa joven turca, debe viajar a México para casarse con Lázaro según la decisión de su familia. Con apenas un baúl de pertenencias y la ilusión de un futuro desconocido, se embarca en una travesía que la llevará a una nueva vida lejos de su tierra natal. A través de su llegada, sus matrimonios, la crianza de sus hijos, la viudez y su regreso a Turquía, Ventura vive cada etapa con profunda intensidad, aderezando sus días con los aromas, sabores, ritmos y proverbios de su origen.

He was the first man, husband, and father. It is said all men have sinned because Adam sinned. But what was Adam really like in those antediluvian days? In this intimate and surprising Bible Character Adventure, we encounter a joyful human who becomes a man of sorrows when he fails to protect his wife from a cunning enemy. In exile, Adam strives to become the man God designed him to be. Yet his every effort and joy are threatened by the great adversary, that serpent of old. When the enemy exploits Cain's jealousy over his younger brother, Adam rises to the challenge, boldly striving to ...

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study. The author begins with the outward aspects of the teaching most likely to puzzle the student coming fresh to the subject. He considers various attitudes to Sufi ideas and evidence of their absorption into medieval Christianity, Hinduism, Jewish mysticism, and modern philosophical teachings.

The captivating saga of an American nurse uncovering her mysterious past in a land far away. As an orphan who aged out of the system, Adira beat the odds, earning a nursing degree and finding a job at the California hospital that once saved her life. After being forced out, she turns to an enticing position in the Middle East. Enchanted by the turquoise sea, towering mountains, and golden sands, Adira falls in love with the culture and welcoming people of Oman. But beneath the surface, the nation’s fabric is being torn apart. And she is one of the threads. In a race against time and the ...

Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, edited by Refaat Alareer, is a compelling collection of short stories from 15 young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel's siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel's 2008-2009 offensive known as Operation Cast Lead, have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing.

Londres, 1840. Arthur, un garçon à la mémoire prodigieuse né sur les rives de la Tamise, est engagé comme apprenti dans une imprimerie. Bientôt, son monde s'ouvre bien au-delà des taudis de la capitale anglaise, vers un autre fleuve, le Tigre, et une ancienne cité de Mésopotamie qui abrite les fragments d'un poème oublié. Turquie, 2014. Chassées de leur village au bord du Tigre, Naryn, une petite fille yézidie, et sa grand-mère entreprennent un long voyage, traversant des terres en guerre dans l'espoir d'atteindre la vallée sacrée de leur peuple, en Irak, pour que Naryn y soit baptisée.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, a passionate portrait of love’s contradictory power, in five illuminating stories. André Aciman, hailed as a writer of “fiction at its most supremely interesting” (The New York Review of Books), has written a novel that...

Nafsi is a collection of poetry and prose, calling you to a spiritual revolution. This compelling work examines the conflict between the soul and the body: its desires, its pain, its love, and its hope. Through poetic allure, this collection will speak directly to your soul, in a way that is hauntingly beautiful.

A Mouth Full of Salt uncovers a country on the brink of seismic change as its women decide for themselves which traditions are fit for purpose–and which prophecies it's time to rewrite.