Sadi for the Twenty-First Century

SADI FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Selected Ghazals of Sadi and Ghazals inspired by them by his Translator Paul Smith. Sadi (Saadi or Sa'di) of Shiraz (1210-1291), a contemporary of Rumi who influenced him, was a Sufi Perfect Master (Qutub) Poet who expressed himself in hundreds of ghazals in his beautiful Divan. Sadi was a great traveller who spent forty years on the road throughout the Middle-East, North Africa and India and many of the incidents he experienced he wrote down in his two most famous works when he finally returned to his beloved birth-place... The Rose Garden (Gulistan) and The Orchard (Bustan). Sadi's mystical love poetry, his ghazals, although almost unknown in the West, are loved by his fellow-countrymen almost as much as those of Hafiz whom he greatly influenced. Here are 87 of them followed by ghazals composed by his translator Paul Smith using the first couplets from Sadi's ghazals as inspiration to create poems that are distinctly modern but still in this ancient form. The correct rhyme-structure has been kept as well as the beauty and meaning of these unique mystical poems. Introduction: Life & Times & Poetry of Sadi and his influence on the East and the West and on the form and meaning of the ghazal and the greatest writers of them with examples. Glossary and a Selected Bibliography. One Appendix. Large Print (14pt) & Large Format ("8 x 10") Paperback. 332 pages. Comments on Paul Smith's Translation of Hafiz's 'Divan'. "It is not a joke... the English version of all the ghazals of Hafiz is a great feat and of paramount importance. I am astonished." Dr. Mir Mohammad Taghavi (Dr. of Literature) Tehran. "Superb translations. 99% Hafiz 1% Paul Smith." Ali Akbar Shapurzman, translator of many works in English into Persian and knower of Hafiz's Divan off by heart. Paul Smith (b.1945) is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets from the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages... including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Mu'in, Amir Khusrau, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Omar Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Baba Farid, Shah Latif, Mu'in, Lalla Ded, 'Iraqi, Ghalib, Nazir, Bulleh Shah, Ibn 'Arabi, Ibn Farid, Rab'ia, Majnun, Mansur Hallaj, Rahman Baba, Iqbal, Ghalib and many others as well as his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books and a dozen screenplays.