Shahnameh: The Epic of Persian Kings
Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings is a new illustrated edition of the classic work written over one thousand years ago by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, one of Persia’s greatest poets. This new prose translation of the national epic is illuminated with over 500 pages of illustrations and will be published in March 2013 to coincide with the Persian New Year, Nowruz.
The lush and intricate illustrations in this edition have been created by award-winning graphic artist and filmmaker Hamid Rahmanian, incorporating images from the pictorial tradition of the Persianate world from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The new translation and adaptation by Ahmad Sadri, retells the mythological and epic stories of the original poem in prose format. This Shahnameh is an extraordinary literary and artistic accomplishment.
Published by The Quantuck Lane Press, distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
Hardcover with slipcase, 592 pages, 500+ four-color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-59372-051-3
Limited Editions
We have created a sumptuous limited edition of this Shahnameh especially for collectors, book lovers and Shahnameh aficionados. This red leather-bound beauty comes enclosed in a stunning printed, black cloth-bound box. The book has gilded edges, a ribbon marker and the book cover is embossed in gold. It is numbered and signed by the artist.
This edition of 299 will sell out quickly, so be sure to place your order early. It will make an impressive Nowruz present, an enduring gift for close friends, family and colleagues and will be treasured for generations to come.
Pre-purchases will be delivered by the 20th of March, 2013.
A little over a thousand years ago a Persian poet named Ferdowsi of Tous collected and put into heroic verse the millennium old mythological and epic traditions of Iran. It took him thirty years to write the sixty thousand verses that comprise the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings). This monumental tome is one of the most important literary works of Iran and like other great epics, such as Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Nibelungenlied and Ramayana, it is a record of the human imaginative consciousness. It is well known and has been adapted through out the Near East, Central Asia and India but is mostly unknown in the West.
