Author: Nezami Ganjavi
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Pages: 278
Publication date: 2020
ISBN: 9780143133995
Back Cover description:
The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a twelfth-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families and whose passion continues to ripple out across the centuries. Theirs is a love that lasts a lifetime, and in Nezami’s immortal telling, erotic longing blends with spiritual self-denial in an allegory of Sufi aspiration, as the amenities of civilization give way to the elemental wilderness, desire is sublimated into a mystical renunciation of the physical world, and the soul confronts its essence.
This is a tour de force of Persian literature, in a translation that captures the extraordinary power and virtuosity of the original.