The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

Dec 4, 2024 3:38 AM

Author:Robert Irwin

Spanning the fifth century to the sixteenth, and ranging from Afghanistan to Spain, this unique collection provides a profound insight into the sheer vitality and depth of Classical Arabic literature. From the earliest surviving fragments of The Thousand and One Nights to the elegant beauty and profound power of the Qur'an - believed by the Islamic faith to contain the actual words of Allah - it includes translated extracts from all the major works of the period, alongside many less well-known but equally fascinating pieces. Exploring such traditional themes as lovesick yearning and fated doom, and considering subjects as diverse as the etiquette of falling in love with slave-girls and the terrors of the sea, this compelling anthology of poetry and prose brilliantly illuminates a body of writing that has been unjustly neglected by the west for centuries.

Reviews

Striking…elegantly published.

—— Julia Adeney Thomas , Times Literary Supplement

This little book, then, contains multitudes. It exemplifies the wisdom, and the frank, unguarded honesty, that can crystallise with age. It is an insight into the chemistry and alchemy of friendship, in this case late-developing, but beautiful in its lateness. It is an oblique reflection on the tumultuous Southern history that its correspondents lived through. And it has the desirable effect of introducing readers to a major Southern writer.

—— Economist

It is a small memoir with a big surprise: a selection of Lee’s letters. They show her to be sociable, opinionated, amusing.

—— Times Literary Supplement

A revealing look at a beloved, mysterious writer.

—— Mail Online

[M]odest and self-abnegating.

—— Telegraph

Orwell saw … that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power

—— Adam Gopnik , New Yorker

[Orwell fought] the evils of the world and the weakness of his body to the day of his death, always striving, striving to tell the truth about what he saw and what he felt

—— Nicholas Walter , Anarchy: A Journal of Anarchist Ideas

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