Rumi's Birds of Wonder: The Great Sufi's Life and Poetry (Selections from the Divan-e Shams)

Rumi has left us thousands of lyric ghazals in Persian, covering every imaginable note and nuance of human experience. Choosing from this multitude of songs is a daunting and revealing task that translator Iraj Anvar has done to perfection in this new collection.

In this volume, our Iranian-born translator has opted for the ecstatic, “drunken,” love-struck Rumi whose intoxicating rhythms, breathless urgency, and dizzying epiphan...