{"title":"Mage Publishers","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781933823720","title":"Joon","description":"Master chef Najmieh Batmanglij distills one of the world's oldest and most influential cuisines to capture its unique flavours in recipes adapted to suit our busy lives. Najmieh's fans have been making meals from her Food of Life for over 30 years. For \"Joon\" she has simplified 75 of her favourite dishes and shows how, with the right ingredients and a few basic tools and techniques, authentic Persian food can easily be prepared at home. The recipes in this book -- each accompanied by a photograph of the finished dish -- come straight from Najmieh's kitchen and include not only the classics of Persian cooking, but also some soon-to-be favourites, such as quinoa or kale cooked Persian-style. You will discover delicious side dishes, from cooling, yogurt-based salads and tasty dips and spreads, to more sustaining platters of grains, beans and fresh herbs; tasty \"kukus\" -- frittata-style omelettes filled with vegetables and herbs; spice-infused fish; mouth-watering meatballs and kebabs served on flat breads with tangy sauces; every kind of rice -- including the incomparable polow topped with various sweet and sour braises; not to mention, delightfully aromatic cakes and cookies to round off meals or enjoy as a snack in between.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309063975285,"sku":"9781933823720","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823720_7205f295-1d96-4ef1-9b1d-52084afdea8f.jpg?v=1786030180"},{"product_id":"9781933823805","title":"When They Broke Down the Door","description":"The power of poetry to map the human heart has been a hallmark of Persian culture for at least a thousand years, and Fatemeh Shams wields it unforgettably. As a member of the Iranian diaspora living in the West, her voice is often one of anguished separation, and many of her poems touch on politics, but as translator Dick Davis says in his introduction to this volume, her approach is \"inward and personal rather than public and propagandistic.\" Frequently, her focus on the individual extends to erotic passion  \"It was night, your hands were full of moonlight...\" -- or addresses its obverse, of loneliness: \"I sleep in my own corpse's arms...\" Whether she is writing in free verse or in traditional literary forms, her remarkable technical abilities and the strength of her feelings always shine through. Shams's verse makes real for us her vision of the world as only poetry can.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309065154933,"sku":"9781933823805","price":20.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823805_1dc519f4-6aa2-490e-9c44-0626f13bd955.jpg?v=1786030181"},{"product_id":"9781933823621","title":"Garden of the Brave in War","description":"When Terence O'Donnell, an American who lived in Iran for fifteen years in the 1960s and 1970s, was asked what he was doing there, he replied, \"The conviction of all Iranians, of most of my compatriots, and indeed of the Russians, was that I was engaged in intelligence work. I was, and what is more I filed a daily report. My employer was myself and my reports consisted of eight thousand pages of journal. This book was drawn from that material.\" For ten of those years, O'Donnell lived on a farm near Shiraz, in southern Iran, where he raised mainly pomegranates, but also quinces, grapes, chickens, and bees. He also made many Iranian friends. His memories of that time have yielded a masterpiece of national portraiture, wonderfully alive to the complexities of the Iranian character -- courteous, capricious, deeply religious yet also playful, generous, and poetic. A work of shimmering beauty and sensitivity, Garden of the Brave in War will deepen every reader's understanding of the often elusive country that lies behind the headlines.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309511356789,"sku":"9781933823621","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823621_48cf6143-8d1e-43f4-b612-4726afc0cbbb.jpg?v=1786030179"},{"product_id":"9781949445169","title":"The Mirror Of My Heart","description":"This new bilingual edition of The Mirror of My Heart - the poems in Persian and English on facing pages - is a unique and captivating collection introduced and translated by Dick Davis, an acclaimed scholar and translator of Persian literature as well as a gifted poet in his own right. In his introduction he provides fascinating background detail on Persian poetry written by women through the ages, including common themes and motifs and a brief overview of Iranian history showing how women poets have been affected by the changing dynasties. From Rabeeh in the tenth century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the twenty-first, each of the eighty-four poets in this volume is introduced in a short biographical note, while explanatory notes give further insight into the poems themselves. One of the very first Persian poets was a woman (Rabeeh, who lived over a thousand years ago) and there have been women poets writing in Persian in virtually every generation since that time until the present. Before the twentieth century they tended to come from societys social extremes. Many were princesses, a good number were hired entertainers of one kind or another, and they were active in many different countries - Iran of course, but also India, Afghanistan, and areas of central Asia that are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Not surprisingly, a lot of their poetry sounds like that of their male counterparts, but a lot doesnt; there are distinctively bawdy and flirtatious poems by medieval women poets, poems from virtually every era in which the poet complains about her husband (sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes with poignant seriousness), touching poems on the death of a child, and many epigrams centered on little details that bring a life from hundreds of years ago vividly before our eyes.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309668315509,"sku":"9781949445169","price":76.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781949445169_16e8efd4-f262-4244-a43b-09c7a05946f2.jpg?v=1786030715"},{"product_id":"9781949445022","title":"Faces of Love","description":"This bilingual edition of Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz has the original Persian verses facing the English translations. The three Shirazi poets whose work is featured here, Hafez, Jahan Malek Khatun, and Obayd-e Zakani, lived at the same time (the mid fourteenth century), and certainly knew of one another  Obayd wrote at least two poems about Jahan Khatun, and Jahan Khatun quotes Hafez in one of her poems. Its extremely likely that, during the 1340s and early 1350s at least, they also knew one another personally. The poetic life of the city during this period centered on the court of the ruling family, the Injus; Jahan Khatun was an Inju princess, while her uncle, Abu Eshaq, the head of the family and the ruler of the city, was a great patron of poets.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309668381045,"sku":"9781949445022","price":75.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781949445022_6824b11b-1a45-46ae-ae4d-bbcd97d66b97.jpg?v=1786030714"},{"product_id":"9781949445879","title":"Simorgh","description":"\u003cp\u003eSimorgh: Portraits on My Mind is one of Abbas Milani’s most self-reflective and engaging books, named after the fabulous bird in Iranian mythology and poetry that personifies the quest for knowledge, solace, and self-discovery. The rise of the Islamic regime in Iran following the revolution of 1979 marked an era of cataclysmic change, accompanied by myriad conspiracy theories about its origins. The portraits presented in Simorgh, each a cross between a brief essay and a short story, explore the lives and loves, youthful illusions and utopian dreams, the harrowing experiences of prison and exile, and the diasporic accomplishments and exilic traumas of individuals who either actively or inadvertently paved the way for the revolution – or whose lives were crushed by the nightmarish reality of contemporary Iran.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe subjects of these portraits, all contemporaries of Milani, include some of Iran’s most renowned writers, politicians, scholars, and activists, alongside friends and family members who act as a poignant chorus to the unfolding saga. Abbas Milani, who lived and worked in Iran until 1987 and was deeply embedded in the crosscurrents of these lives, and an intimate perspective on their stories. Together, these portraits weave a cohesive narrative, creating a cumulative effect that is both profound and compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAbbas Milani has served as the founding director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University since 2005. His extensive body of work includes The Persian Sphinx: Amir-Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Revolution and The Shah. He is currently working on a book about Reza Shah. Simorgh, originally written and published in two volumes in Persian has been masterfully translated into English by Mahasti Afshar. Engaging and insightful, Simorgh is Milani at his best and will enthrall both those new to his work and those already familiar with it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309704982901,"sku":"9781949445879","price":45.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781949445879_34f925de-7c10-471a-b310-6e1ebcea3df9.jpg?v=1786030716"},{"product_id":"9781933823935","title":"Discovering Cyrus","description":"Some of the most fascinating human epochs lie in the borderlands between history and mystery. So it is with the life of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire in the sixth century BCE. By conquest or gentler means, he brought under his rule a dominion stretching from the Aegean Sea to the Hindu Kush and encompassing some tens of millions of people. All across this immense imperium, he earned support and stability by respecting local customs and religions, avoiding the brutal ways of tyranny, and efficiently administering the realm through provincial governors. The empire would last another two centuries, leaving an indelible Persian imprint on much of the ancient world. The Greek chronicler Xenophon, looking back from a distance of several generations, wrote: \"Cyrus did indeed eclipse all other monarchs, before or since.\" The vision of the Biblical prophet known as Second Isaiah anticipates Cyrus' repatriation of Jews living in exile in Babylon with these words of the Lord: \"He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please.\" Despite what he achieved and bequeathed, much about Cyrus remains uncertain. Persians of his era had no great respect for the written word and the most complete accounts of his life were composed by Greeks. More fragmentary or tangential evidence takes many forms--among them, archaeological remains, administrative records in subject lands, and the always tricky stuff of legend. Given these challenges, Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World is a remarkable feat of portraiture. In his vast sweep, Reza Zarghamee draws on sources of every kind, painstakingly assembling detail, and always weighing evidence carefully where contradictions arise. He describes the background of the Persian people, the turbulence of the times, and the roots of Cyrus' policies. His account of the imperial era itself delves into religion, military methods, commerce, court life, and much else besides. The result is a living, breathing Cyrus standing atop a distant world that played a key role in shaping our own. Cyrus the Great, Persian Empire.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309794931061,"sku":"9781933823935","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823935_e815f92b-bca3-478b-b416-898d5a66574b.jpg?v=1786030182"},{"product_id":"savushun","title":"Savushun","description":"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. The original Persian edition of Savushun has sold over half a million copies.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57483352310133,"sku":"9780934211314","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780934211314.jpg?v=1786178493"},{"product_id":"black-parrot-green-crow","title":"Black Parrot, Green Crow","description":"Until now, only a sparse selection of Golshiri's fiction has been available in English translation -- three short stories, a novella written under a pseudonym, and his novel Prince Ehtejab, which was made into a film. Now, Black Parrot, Green Crow brings together the largest collection of Golshiri's writings in any language -- eighteen short stories and three poems. They span the arc of Golshiri's career as a writer, from his days as a young student in Isfahan under the Pahlavi regime, to the 1980s and 1990s, and the disappointment of Iranian people with the Islamic Republic. Golshiri's stories, crafted with a withering irony, expose the fanatical and draconian political apparatus of tyrannical regimes, while his wry humour and delicate sensitivity to the human condition tempers the blistering satire, making the narratives short but nonetheless harrowing and touching tragedies. The tales are filled with the uncertainty of life in a culture undergoing drastic change, and hauntingly etch the plight of the individual in a climate of political oppression.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57483352998261,"sku":"9780934211741","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780934211741.jpg?v=1786178493"},{"product_id":"epic-sedition","title":"Epic \u0026 Sedition","description":"Iran's national epic, the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, has traditionally been regarded by both Persians and Westerners as a poem celebrating the central role of monarchy in Persian history. In this groundbreaking book, Dick Davis argues that the poem is far more than a patriotic chronicle of kingly deeds. Rather, it is a subtle and highly ambiguous discussion of authority, and far from being a celebration of monarchy, its most famous episodes and heroes amount to a radical critique of the institution. Davis demonstrates that the public world of kingly authority is shadowed in the poem by a series of tragic father-son relationships, and that in both the royal and familial spheres, authority figures are invariably presented as morally inferior to those whom they govern. The Shahnameh's complex aesthetic structure and its tragic resolution of problem of authority and hierarchy make it an artistic artefact able to take its rightful place beside the major masterpieces of world literature.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492400406901,"sku":"9781933823058","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823058.jpg?v=1786529239"},{"product_id":"persian-sphinx","title":"Persian Sphinx","description":"Amir Abbas Hoveyda was a central figure in the historic struggle between modernity and tradition in Iran -- a struggle pitting Western cosmopolitanism against Persian isolationism, secularism against religious fundamentalism, and ultimately civil society and democracy against authoritarianism. Born in Tehran in 1919 to a family of solid middle class comforts and faded aristocratic roots, Hoveyda was an elegant, cultivated, well-read, and witty man, educated in Beirut, London, and Brussels. After entering the Iranian foreign service in 1942, he served in France, Germany, and Turkey, then returned to Iran in 1956 to join the National Iranian Oil Company. In 1965, the shah appointed him the country's prime minister. Hoveyda would serve faithfully in that post for thirteen years. Amir Abbas Hoveyda embodied the aspirations, the accomplishments and also the failures of a whole generation of Iranian technocrats -- mostly Western-trained -- who sought to free Iran from the travails of poverty and repression and guide it into the modern age. Hoveyda would be both a leader and a victim of that effort. In telling the story of Hoveyda's life, the author has not only laid bare the development of Iranian society during a pivotal period (1919-1978) but has also unearthed important new material on U.S.-Iranian relations. From 1957 onward, Amir Abbas Hoveyda played critical roles in dealing with U.S. foreign policy and fundamentalist Islamic opposition in Iran. Through careful use of hitherto unexamined archival materials, unpublished letter, and personal journals, along with extensive interviews with over a hundred relatives, friends, and foes, the author has brilliantly caught the pathos and passion of Hoveyda's life and times. This is biography at its most powerful and will reward the scholar and the general reader alike.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492401389941,"sku":"9781933823348","price":45.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823348.jpg?v=1786529240"},{"product_id":"persian-gulf-links-with-the-hinterland","title":"Persian Gulf -- Links with the Hinterland","description":"This book focuses on two related themes: the importance of what goes on in a port city's hinterland, and, the importance of a safe and secure road that connects a port city to its markets. What happened in the port of Bushehr was influenced by events in nearby towns such as Borazjan and Kazerun, and far off provinces such as Khuzestan, as well as by the actions of local chiefs controlling the land adjacent to the trade route. The histories of Borazjan and Kazerun show the importance of the behaviour of local chiefs and of migrating tribes in keeping the caravan route secure or not. A breakdown of the port city's authority over its hinterland, in particular the trade route, impacted on its well-being both financially and politically. Likewise, the history of the Banu Ka'b in Khuzestan shows how the take-over of tribal leadership by a more commercially oriented lineage led to the rise of a rival port to Bushehr that ultimately would oust it from its leading position. The description of the commercial route between Bandar Abbas and Isfahan, during the Safavid period, highlights the importance of road infrastructure in linking a seaport with the markets in its hinterland. The ports in the Persian Gulf were but caravan termini. The ports themselves did not constitute a major market for imports; the real market for these goods was in the interior of Iran and, therefore, the road linking the port and its markets was a lifeline for both. This study makes clear that what happened along that road, connecting the terminus and the market, determined to a great extent how much volume was shipped and at what cost.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492402307445,"sku":"9781933823461","price":41.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781933823461.jpg?v=1786529241"},{"product_id":"mosaddegh","title":"Mosaddegh","description":"Irans Mohammad Mosaddegh and Georgias Zviad Gamsakhurdia were two of the most consequential national leaders of the twentieth century. Nicolas Gorjestani examines, in two separate volumes, each leaders life story, resistance strategy, governance, reform record, and overthrow. The two books combine insightful memoir, strategic analysis, economic assessment, and historical review to weave a compelling narrative that gives the reader a front-row seat to the transformational events that unfolded in Iran in the 1950s and Georgia in the 1990s. The similarities between these two patriots are remarkable: their personal background, vision, governing philosophy, political destiny, and legacy. With courage, passion, and tenacity, they took on domestic establishment elites to fight against authoritarian or arbitrary rule. Both leaders shared a vision of a modern, democratic state, and, to that end, undertook pathbreaking political and socio-economic reforms. They also challenged the world powers to end colonial domination of Iran and Georgia and to re-establish national sovereignty. Mosaddegh (Book 1) locked horns with Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1951-1953 over the nationalisation of Irans oil industry, while Gamsakhurdia (Book 2) stood up to Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush in 1990-1991 over independence from the Soviet Union. Their governance was cut short as both leaders were overthrown in similar paramilitary coups. Mosaddegh was toppled in the first post-WWII regime change organised and supported by the British MI6 and American CIA; Gamsakhurdia was deposed in the first regime change in the former Soviet space supported by the Soviet military.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492439368053,"sku":"9781949445305","price":86.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781949445305.jpg?v=1786529283"},{"product_id":"dusk-of-exile","title":"The Dusk of Exile","description":"Born in Tehran and now a member of the Swedish Academy, Jila Mossaed is one of the most distinctive poetic voices of exile and belonging. Having written in both Persian and Swedish, she brings to her Persian poetry a rare perspective on language and loss—illuminating the fragile threshold between silence and speech, home and displacement, memory and renewal. In these radiant translations, drawn from Mossaed’s eleven Persian collections, we enter a world where exile becomes a form of vision. The natural world—wind, sea, stone, and flame—mirrors the inner life of the poet, revealing how loss can sharpen perception and how solitude can become a dwelling place. Mossaed’s poetry moves through tenderness and clarity, sorrow and radiance, until longing itself becomes a kind of home. Mojdeh Bahar’s faithful and lyrical translations bring this extraordinary body of work into English for the first time, allowing readers to encounter a voice that bridges cultures, histories, and languages. The Dusk of Exile is a book about the endurance of the human spirit—an intimate and timeless testament to how poetry can transform displacement into light.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492440842613,"sku":"9781949445961","price":35.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781949445961.jpg?v=1786529285"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/publisher-mage-publishers.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}