The popularity of the book is so great that it has run into forty two impressions ever since it was originally published in the year 1951

    When he leaves, a trail of blood is all that remains. He is a monster,  Grendel, and all who know of him live in fear. Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, knows something  must be done to stop Grendel. But who will guard the great hall he has built, where so many men have lost their lives to the monster while keeping watch?Only one man dares to stand up to  Grendel's fury --Beowulf.

    Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate first-hand in his country's political and social upheavals.Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Iran, Parisa Reza has written a powerful love story filled with scenes of hope and heartbreak.

      No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement.  Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion—except that they achieved their conquests not over the course of centuries as the Romans did but in a matter of decades. Just like the Greeks during the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumphant against the greatest empire of the day—not by standing on the defensive, however, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path.

    From his vantage point at the break-up of the old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution.

    Once there, he was to copy a three-thousand-year-old cuneiform inscription—an order of the first king of Persia—as a means of freeing himself from his emotional confinement. For the remainder of his life, Aga Akbar used these cuneiform characters to fill a notebook with writings only he could understand. Years later, his son, Ishmael—a political dissident in exile—is attempting to translate the notebook . . . and in the process tells his father's story, his own, and the story of twentieth-century Iran.A stunning and ambitious novel by a singular literary talent, My Father's Notebook is at once a masterful chronicle of a culture's troubled voyage into modernity and the poignant, timeless tale of a son's enduring love.

    Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (e.g., the Gareth story). Le Morte d'Arthur was first published in 1485 by William Caxton, and is today one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

    In addition to works by writers already well-known in the West such as Idwār al-Kharrāṭ, Fu’ād al-Takarlī and Nobel Prize-winning Najīb Maḥfūẓ , the collection includes stories by key authors whose fame has hitherto been restricted to the Middle East.This bilingual reader is ideal for students of Arabic as well as lovers of literature who wish to broaden their appreciation of the work of Middle Eastern writers. The collection features stories in the original Arabic, accompanied by an English translation and a brief author biography, as well as a discussion of context and background. Each story is followed by a glossary and discussion of problematic language points.Ronak Husni is a senior lecturer at Heriot-Watt University where she teaches Arabic language, literature and translation.Daniel L. Newman is Course Director of the MA in Arabic/English Translation at the University of Durham. He also published An Imam in Paris (Saqi Books).

    The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

    

    This collection offers extracts translated by the authors from the best of traditional and contemporary Persian poetry and illustrates them with examples of Persian art in the British Museum. It also includes a brief introduction to its tradition and a short biographical note about each of the major poets.

    The mythic legacy of the Scandinavians includes a cycle of stories filled with magnificent images from pre-Christian Europe. Gods, humans, and monstrous beasts engage in prodigious drinking bouts, contests of strength, greedy schemes for gold, and lusty encounters. The Norse pantheon includes Odin, the wisest and most fearsome of the gods; Thor, the thundering powerhouse; and the exquisite, magic-wielding Freyja. Their loves, wars, and adventures take us through worlds both mortal and divine, culminating in a blazing doomsday for gods and humans alike. These stories bear witness to the courage, passion, and boundless spirit that were hallmarks of the Norse world.“Kevin Crossley-Holland retells the Norse myths in clear, attractive prose . . . An excellent introduction, notes, and a glossary provide mythological and historical backgrounds and suggest parallels with myths in other parts of the world.”–The Denver Post

    Instead, she embarks on an illicit affair with her art teacher, Keyvan, and they tentatively imagine a future together.But the sudden death of her uncle, an outspoken journalist, raises many unanswered questions and when Layla’s cousin, who is visiting from America, is arrested by the morality police, the komiteh, Layla’s plans for the future begin to unravel. “I was totally captivated by this novel. Layla is torn between her heart and the restrictions of her culture. She obeys her heart though not without a price. This wonderfully poetic story keeps you hooked right to the very end.”  -  Stephanie Hale, author and broadcaster   “a bittersweet tale of betrayed trust and ruptured innocence… the feel for colour and language is vibrant” -  Guardian first novel choice   “Vividly written, fresh and eloquent, a girl’s poignant tale of love and menace in contemporary Iran.” -  Fay Weldon   “I loved this book. It gives you real insight into the world of educated middle-class Iranians in the early 21st century. We are so used to the Iranians we meet in the UK that we do not realise how hard it is to live under their political regime at home. A joy to read.” -  www.openingthebook.com   Louise Soraya Black Born in England in 1977 to an English mother and Iranian father. Her father worked for UNICEF so she spent 17 years living overseas, in countries including Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia. In spite of all this travel, she had strong roots: the family spent their summers in England and winter holidays in Iran.She began an English degree at University College London, but after a year switched to Law. She spent 8 years in corporate law but was unfulfilled so began writing in her spare time. She felt it was important to write about Iran because Iran is portrayed in the media as a bleak and oppressive place.  She wanted to show Iran as a beautiful country, where the food is delicious, and Iranians are warm and hospitable. And while the media tends to paint a portrait of Iranian women as submissive and voiceless, this was not at all her experience so she created resilient and brave female characters in her novel.She had just about given up hope of finding a publisher for this novel, when she found out that Pomegranate Sky had won the Virginia Prize, a new literary prize for unpublished women writers. She was astonished and overjoyed, particularly when the novel received excellent reviews. After the birth of her son, she didn't return to law and instead, decided to focus on her writing. She has just completed her second novel.

    The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention.In this book, veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full account of this fateful operation. His account is centered around an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an assessment of the coup's "haunting and terrible legacy."Operation Ajax, as the plot was code-named, reshaped the history of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. It restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne, allowing him to impose a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection."It is not far-fetched," Kinzer asserts in this book, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."Drawing on research in the United States and Iran, and using material from a long-secret CIA report, Kinzer explains the background of the coup and tells how it was carried out. It is a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents. There are accounts of bribes, staged riots, suitcases full of cash, and midnight meetings between the Shah and CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, who was smuggled in and out of the royal palace under a blanket in the back seat of a car. Roosevelt,the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was a real-life James Bond in an era when CIA agents operated mainly by their wits. After his first coup attempt failed, he organized a second attempt that succeeded three days later.The colorful cast of characters includes the terrified young Shah, who fled his country at the first sign of trouble; General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War commander and the radio voice of "Gang Busters," who flew to Tehran on a secret mission that helped set the coup in motion; and the fiery Prime Minister Mossadegh, who outraged the West by nationalizing the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British, outraged by the seizure of their oil company, persuaded President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh was leading Iran toward Communism. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain became the coup's main sponsors.Brimming with insights into Middle Eastern history and American foreign policy, this book is an eye-opening look at an event whose unintended consequences - Islamic revolution and violent anti-Americanism--have shaped the modern world. As the United States assumes an ever-widening role in the Middle East, it is essential reading.

    Zhivago and Romeo and Juliet.  Its mysterious author was recently the subject of a feature article in the New Yorker, which has inspired a forthcoming biography. Out of print for nearly three decades until the hardcover re-release last year, Ali and Nino is Kurban Said's masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.It is the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea, poised precariously between east and west.  Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim schoolboy from a proud, aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European sensibilities.   To be together they must overcome blood feud and scandal, attempt a daring horseback rescue, and travel from the bustling street of oil-boom Baku, through starkly beautiful deserts and remote mountain villages, to the opulent palace of Ali's uncle in neighboring Persia.  Ultimately the lovers are drawn back to Baku, but when war threatens their future, Ali is forced to choose between his loyalty to the beliefs of his Asian ancestors and his profound devotion to Nino.  Combining the exotic fascination of a tale told by Scheherazade with the range and magnificence of an epic, Ali and Nino is a timeless classic of love in the face of war.