Mage Publishers Inc. – förlag

Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers; corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority; the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship; tribalism; and the fear of famine. The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife and mother, who copes with her idealistic and uncompromising husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for individual identity.

Daneshvar’s style is both sensitive and imaginative, while following cultural themes and metaphors. Within basic Iranian paradigms, the characters play out the roles inherent in their personalities. While Savushun is a unique piece of literature that transcends the boundaries of the historical community in which it was written, it is also the best single work for understanding modern Iran. Although written prior to the Islamic Revolution, it brilliantly portrays the social and historical forces that gave pre-revolutionary Iran its characteristic hopelessness and emerging desperation so inadequately understood by outsiders.

Note: The original Persian edition of Savushun has sold over half a million copies. The German language edition is available from Amazon.de (Amazon.com’s German branch)

Vis & Ramin is one of the world’s great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis.

Vis & Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later.

The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today. Shahru, the married queen of Mah, refuses an offer of marriage from King Mobad of Marv but promises that if she bears a daughter she will give the child to him as a bride. She duly bears a daughter, Vis, who is brought up by a nurse in the company of Mobad’s younger brother Ramin. By the time Vis reaches the age of marriage, Shahru has forgotten her promise and instead weds her daughter to Vis’s older brother, Viru. The next day Mobads brother Zard arrives to demand the bride, and fighting breaks out, during which Vis’s father is killed. Mobad then bribes to hand Vis over to him. Mobad’s brother Ramin escorts Vis to her new husband and falls in love with her on the way. Vis has no love for and turns to her old nurse for help….

Told in language that is lush, sensual and highly inventive, Vis and Ramin is a masterpiece of psychological perceptiveness and characterization: Shahru is worldly and venal, the nurse resourceful and amoral (she will immediately remind Western readers of the nurse in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), Vis high-spirited and determined, Ramin impetuous and volatile. And the hopeless psychological situation of Vis’s husband, Mobad, flickers wearily from patience to self-assertion to fury and back again. The origins of Vis and Ramin, are obscure. The story dates from the time of the Parthians (who ruled Persia from the third century bce to the third century ce), and certainly existed in oral and perhaps written form before the eleventh century Persian poet Fakhraddin Gorgani composed the version that has come down to us.

the new york times declares 

najmieh is one of “seven immigrant women who changed the way americans eat.”

Abadan, 1951. Iran and Britain are bracing for battle over the continued British monopoly of Iran''s oil. Twenty-nine-year-old Ebrahim Golestan, who was to become a towering figure in Iranian cinema and literature, encounters Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet, who died two years later at the age of thirty-nine from bronchial disease and pneumonia. More for his celebrity than an intimate knowledge of the subject, Thomas had been sent to Iran by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to write a script for a propaganda film about the company''s supposedly salutary role in the country. But for a few hours, Golestan and Thomas pause amidst the escalating standoff between their two countries and speak candidly about poetry, history, philosophy, and the perils of translation. Published here for the first time is the English translation (with facing pages in the original Persian) of Golestan''s unflinching portrayal of that encounter, revealing, all too clearly, how unsuited Thomas was for the task in hand.

Accompanying the translation is an account of Thomas''s time in Iran, written by Abbas Milani, Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University, together with Alina Utrata, a Ph.D. candidate and Gates Cambridge scholar. Based on the poet''s letters, journals, and archival material in England and Wales, it helps to shed further light on an episode long shrouded in mystery and plagued by controversy. 

Publication of this book coincides with the hundredth birthday in October 2022 of Ebrahim Golestan. To mark the occasion, Professor Milani has included a personal and erudite introductory essay on Golestan''s life and work, examining his pioneering approach to film and his important contribution to Iranian literature, despite living in exile for most of his adult life. With a filmography and selected bibliography of the works by or about Golestan, this multifaceted volume offers not only a striking commentary on Iranian arts, politics, and history, set against the tense backdrop of the impending geopolitical clash between Britain and Iran, but also a commemoration of the work of one of the most eminent and influential representatives of Iranian culture in modern times.

Abadan, 1951. Iran and Britain are bracing for battle over the continued British monopoly of Iran''s oil. Twenty-nine-year-old Ebrahim Golestan, who was to become a towering figure in Iranian cinema and literature, encounters Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet, who died two years later at the age of thirty-nine from bronchial disease and pneumonia. More for his celebrity than an intimate knowledge of the subject, Thomas had been sent to Iran by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to write a script for a propaganda film about the company''s supposedly salutary role in the country. But for a few hours, Golestan and Thomas pause amidst the escalating standoff between their two countries and speak candidly about poetry, history, philosophy, and the perils of translation. Published here for the first time is the English translation (with facing pages in the original Persian) of Golestan''s unflinching portrayal of that encounter, revealing, all too clearly, how unsuited Thomas was for the task in hand.

Accompanying the translation is an account of Thomas''s time in Iran, written by Abbas Milani, Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University, together with Alina Utrata, a Ph.D. candidate and Gates Cambridge scholar. Based on the poet''s letters, journals, and archival material in England and Wales, ithelps to shed further light on an episode long shrouded in mystery and plagued by controversy. 

Publication of this book coincides with the hundredth birthday in October 2022 of Ebrahim Golestan. To mark the occasion, Professor Milani has included a personal and erudite introductory essay on Golestan''s life and work, examining his pioneering approach to film and his important contributionto Iranian literature, despite living in exile for most of his adult life. With a filmography and selected bibliography of the works by or about Golestan, this multifaceted volume offers not only a striking commentary on Iranian arts, politics, and history, set against the tensebackdrop of the impending geopolitical clash between Britain and Iran, but also a commemoration of the work of one of the most eminent and influential representatives of Iranian culture in modern times.

Iranian women have been writing Persian poetry for over a thousand years, and in the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged once again as an outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. 

In this bilingual anthology, encompassing both the most progressive and the most regressive eras for women in Iran, Mojdeh Bahar introduces readers to the poems of Iranian women during the past sixty years. Focusing mainly on poets writing today, Song of the Ground Jay engages with a diverse array of Iranian women''s voices that includes the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities-with varying styles, tones, and themes, painting a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern Persian poetry by women. 

For anyone who has wanted to try their hand at a conversation with contemporary Persian poetry by Iranian women but doesn''t know where to start, Song of the Ground Jay opens a door and invites you to walk in.

Iranian women have been writing Persian poetry for over a thousand years,and in the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged once again as an outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise.

In this expanded bilingual anthology encompassing both the most progressiveand the most regressive eras for women in Iran, Mojdeh Bahar introducesreaders to the poems of 104 Iranian women during the past sixty years. Focusing mainly on poets writing today, this expanded edition of Song of the Ground Jayengages with a very diverse array of Iranian women’s voices that includes the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities—with varying styles, tones, and themes, painting a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern Persian poetry by women.

For anyone who has wanted to try their hand at a conversation with contemporary Persian poetry by Iranian women but doesn’t know where to start, Song of the Ground Jay opens a door and invites you to walk in.

The Chinese invented papermaking, which by the 8th century had reached the Muslim world in Samarkand and Baghdad, and Spain by the 11th century. Much later at the end of the 18th century onwards, modern, industrial papermaking was developed by the Europeans. The History of Paper in Iran, 1501 to 1925 sets out for the reader the types of paper made in Iran during the Safavid and Qajar periods and the crucial role imported paper played in the country.

The Iranian government attempted to introduce modern European paper production technology, first by sending students abroad to learn about this technology and then by purchasing equipment to set up a paper industry. However, during the 19th century, domestic Iranian paper production came under increasing pressure from paper imports, and the government abandoned its efforts to modernize the domestic paper industry.

The authors, renowned scholar Willem Floor in collaboration with Amélie Couvrat Desvergnes a museum conservator of artworks on paper and books, identify and illustrate the watermarks and/or countermarks of the various paper producers and provide examples of the diversity of quality, composition, and nature of the different types of paper used by various strata of the Iranian society. Also provided are detailed import data, showing which country exported paper to Iran, via which routes, as well as their changing market position over time. Finally, the various end uses of paper, from books and farmans to paintings, and diverse packing and utilitarian paper are examined and, where possible, quantified data are presented. This book will reward scholars and general readers alike.